The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-04
BEN7N7GFANNs BIG AUTOMOBILE SHOW BEGINS TOMORROW

are,' the girl went on. The ring was given to George Cher fiance) by his brother, who had bought 1t from someone, and George thought it so quaint and pretty that he gave it to me as an en- gagement ring instead of the regulation diamond
 It is quaint replied Carter, quietly, and returned it without another word.
 Later he took the bridegroom- aside and. mentioning the ring, asked if he krew where his brother had obtained it. Certainly was the reply, my brother, who fought in the civil war in the--New York regiment told me he bought it from a Confederate prisoner
 Oh, said Carter, I asked because I once saw ring that was rather like it. But he never told them that it was his ring"
 Mir. Humphrey, who, when the city of Petersburg was evacuated by the south ern troops helped to set fire to the S4000,000 worth of tobacco stored in the warehouses there, told me the above story as a cap to one, also about a ring and the civil war, which l had pre- viously related to him. It is hard to say which of these stories is the strangest. The reader may decide for himself
 The tale of ring number two, a signet ring with a brown stone, was told me by MT. Charles McEvoy the novelist and playwright (now in khaki), whose little finger it has adorned for many years. MT. McEvoy and his elder brother, Ambrose. who is one of the most dis tinguished portrait painters of the day, are the sons of famous British inven- tor who played a prominent part in the American civil war, but whose name is probably almost, if not quite unknown to the present generation.
 Capt. Ambrose McEvoy, as the latter eventually became, went to America as a boy and was shipwrecked on the coast of Virginia narrowly escaping being state and grew up like a native south erner. When the civil war broke out, he threw in his lot with the ConfederateS, and, during the greater part of the war, was director of the bureau of ordnance at Richmond, the southern capital He was the inventor in fact, of most of the explosives used by the Confederates, as well as of their torpedoes and submarine mines, and when, at the conclusion of the war, he returned to this country, our admiralty took over most of his inven- tions, the submarine mines which defend- ed these islands until recent date hav- ing been of his designing.
 Both his sons are fond of telling the story of personal relic of their father a seal ring with plain brown stone, which MT. Charles McEVoy sometimes wears on his little finger.
 Tt was presented to my father by the two daughters of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President" said MT. McEvoy to the writer. Tn those days every southern gentleman prided himself on his dancing, and there were few who could step it. more gracefully than my father. Accordingly he taught the two Misses Davis, and as a mark of their apprecia- ton received this ring inscribed, as you see, Captain A. McEvoy from his pupils, April 6, 1S53
 "One day just before the beginning of the war, while he was smartening him. self up to take over his command, my father went into a shop in Richmond, Va, and bought pair of gloves. Later he discovered that he had lost his much prized ring. He sought for it in vain