The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1876-08-17
The Wife Of Gov. HAYES.

Said LandOr sIn contentious for power, the
philosophy and the poetry of life are dropped
and trodden down. Domestic affections can
no more flourish and bloom in the hardened
race-course of politics than flowers can in the
pavements Of the strcets.''
"Not always" said, as my eyes fell ON this
paragraph. II wot of domestic garden in
in the midst of plain of politics whose affec-
tions are green as any in Arcadia, bearing pc
rennial blossoms"
The picture before my mind is that of man
in the early vigor of life, above the medium
height, blue eyed and blond bearded, gentle,
courteous and clear thOughted, without YER
bage of speech, handsome in his colonel's uni
form; a 1.-THE, slight, but not petite, lady, half
decade his junior, dark haired, her splennid
brown eyes alght with maternal love, three
boys, fair bright, ominous OF proud manhood
the eldest of whom was on the hither side of
his teens.
1t was in the early years Of the war. After
a rugged campaign in the West Virginia noun
tains, in which we had aired our sabres at
Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry, leaving a
score of our comrades behind us to mark the
passage with a soldiers grave, we hai come
down into the Valley of the Kanawha for rest
and re-eauipment for the stern work awaiting
us. Into our midst then, sharing with her
husband, the austere lot of a soldier, sitting at
our camp fires, putting new heart into many a
homesick boy with her CHEEKY words, Danish
ing the fever's brain from many bronzed
cheek with her gentle touch, came this fair
lady with her boys. With many of us the
memory of home, mother, sister, wife, sweet
heart was green in our hearts for we had not
yet learn to scorn the soft employment of
peace, so that her coming seemed like visit
from our own best loved, for she was a mother,
sister, sweetheart to us all. Man, without the
refining influence of woman, soon lapses into
that state from which there Is but a single step
to barbarism. Her presence held us to a
brighter plane; awoke in us the quiescing, bet
ter elements of our natures, rebuked the I'M
worthy thought of speech, effaced the attritions
of coarseness. She grew into hearts. Not a man
in all those thousands but had risked his life
for her, but had laid in the dust whose dare
utter word in her dspraise. We adopted
her each for his ''ladye fayre,'' and named
our camp in her honor-Camp Lucy Hayes.
The handsome colonel of the '62 is the man
named for President in '76, and this gentle
friend of the soldier in those trying scenes, this
companion of her husbands fortunes it was to
quit her home for the tent, the camp fires and
the austereties of the field, was his wife-a
true woman in the highest sense of that SUI
preme title of nobility, an affectionate mother,
a devoted spouse, one formed by nature to
adorn the highest station, as she has ever
graced the circle of her home. Ten thousand
hearts went out for her anew when the tidings
were flashed forth that her husband had been
called to the Chief Magistracy as they recalled
with gratitude the remembrance of those
buried days-the hearts of men grown gray,of
boys now sturdy men. of stalwart forms since
bent and MANNED. and OF mothers wives and
daughters to whom they told the story of her
praise. w. E. S.