On another occasion the General and I were riding out together and he mentioned the following odd incident to me: His eldest son when at college in the North purchased a gold-headed walking-stick as a present to the Bishop. Wishing his name and seal engraved upon it, the son took it to an engraver in New York, giving him a picture of the Bishop's seal as published in a Church Almanac. The seal was a simple shield having for its device a cross in the center, with a crosier and key laid across it. By some hocus pocus the artist engraved a crosier and a _sword_ instead of the key. The Bishop had the cane still when he told me this, and I think it was his intention to adopt that device as his seal thenceforth. But, of course, as we all know, the Bishop's death before the close of the war prevented his adopting a seal for his future work in the Episcopate.
It must not be supposed, however, that my time was idly spent in Shelbyville or in reading such books as "Robinson Crusoe" and listening to the charming conversation of General Polk and others. On the 2nd of March, at the request of my fellow-chaplains, General Bragg issued an order to the effect that I was assigned to duty at the general hospitals of Polk's corps, and was to proceed to a central point and there establish my office. With the approval of Medical Officers, I was to visit the different hospitals, rendering such services and affording such relief and consolation to the sick and wounded as a minister only could give.
On my copy of this order was endorsed "Transportation furnished in kind from Wartrace to Atlanta, Mch. 3, '63." So I went off and was gone several weeks, visiting my family in Rome, Georgia, before my return. I made also a trip to Columbia, Tennessee, on business relating to my new appointment--a distance of forty miles from Shelbyville, over roads none of the best at that time.
While I was in Rome I received a very characteristic letter from my friend, Colonel Yeatman, on Polk's staff, which gave me an amusing account of the services held in Shelbyville on the day appointed by the President of the Confederate States to be observed as a day of fasting and prayer. The chaplain of an Alabama regiment preached a very good sermon, the letter says, and then "your brother ---- wound up with a prayer--eminently a _war prayer_--in which he prayed that their (the Yankees') moral sensibilities might be awakened by the 'roar of our cannon and the gleam of our bayonets and that the _stars and bars_ might soon wave in triumph through these beleagured states!' and then after prescribing a course which he desired might be followed by the Lord, he quit." It is such a good example of the manner in which some persons attempt to preach to the people while they pray to God, that it is quite worth quoting here.