fling incidents in our history. The names were absurd. One of the most delicate and refined of our women was a superb rider and had shot buffalo, so her intimates spoke of her, when trying to provoke repartee, as "Buffalo Ann." My sobriquet of "the old lady" dated back to the first days of my married life. When the general and his merry young staff returned from a raid in the Shenandoah Valley, they descried an old Dutchman, who did not care which side in the war succeeded, so long as he and his property were left alone. His house had been their head-quarters in a former raid, and they all rode up there to halt again. The old Hans stood on his steps as they approached and wafted them away, at the same time reiterating, by way of emphasis, "Gentlemens, I have no objections to your coming in, but the old lady she kicks agin it." After that I could not raise the mildest protest against any plan but that those mischievous brothers would exclaim pathetically, and in a most tormenting tone, "What a good time we might have if the old lady didn't kick agin it." Sometimes the mildest and quietest one of us all would be called by some appellation so suggestive of ruffianism and bloodshed that it was the extreme of the ridiculous to associate the person and the name together. For instance, the best regulated and least sensational one would find himself addressed as "Shacknasty Bill, or the Sinewy Slayer of the Ghostly Gulch." Another, always inclined to gloom, was given a rousing slap on the back as his good-morning, and a hearty "How are you, Old Skull and Cross-bones?" No one escaped. I used to think the joking was carried too far sometimes, but it
