Two Little Confederates
Thomas Nelson Page
Paperback
(Independently published, July 6, 2020)
The "Two Little Confederates" lived at Oakland. It was nota handsome place, as modern ideas go, but down in OldVirginia, where the standard was different from the laterone, it passed in old times as one of the best plantations inall that region. The boys thought it the greatest place inthe world, of course excepting Richmond, where they hadbeen one year to the fair, and had seen a man pull fire outof his mouth, and do other wonderful things. It was quitesecluded. It lay, it is true, right between two of the countyroads, the Court-house Road being on one side, and onthe other the great "Mountain Road," down which the largecovered wagons with six horses and jingling bells used togo; but the lodge lay this side of the one, and "the bigwoods," where the boys shot squirrels, and hunted'possums and coons, and which reached to the edge of"Holetown," stretched between the house and the other,so that the big gate-post where the semi-weekly mail wasleft by the mail-rider each Tuesday and Friday afternoonwas a long walk, even by the near cut through the woods.The railroad was ten miles away by the road. There was anearer way, only about half the distance, by which thenegroes used to walk and which during the war, after allthe horses were gone, the boys, too, learned to travel; butbefore that, the road by Trinity Church and Honeyman'sBridge was the only route, and the other was simply a dim 3bridle-path, and the "horseshoe-ford" was known to theinitiated alone.