The name of Robert E. Lee ranks high in the list of America's great. He was perhaps the finest military genius this country ever produced; but less for that reason than for his noble and shining character is he now revered by a whole nation. He stood always for the highest ideals.

Such a man didn't "just grow." And yet, while whole libraries have been written about General Lee, no one before has thought to reconstruct his childhood in simple words, so that very young readers may enjoy it. In this delightful book Miss Monsell, who is Registrar at Richmond College, sets down the story of his life as a boy in Old Virginia—his family, his homes, his playmates, his adventures. Her narrative, while fictional, is held true to the spirit and faithful to the known facts of his childhood.

And never intruding her theme, she yet makes clear those formative influences that helped shape Lee into the great and admirable leader of men which he became. The Virginia life in town and on the plantations when exciting things were happening to stir the young nation; the proud name which his father, Light Horse Harry Lee of the Revolution, had left him and which he was never to tarnish; the stories his father told of heroism and courage in war; his love of horses, of the woods, of hunting; his devotion to his mother and his early responsibilities at home; his studies for West Point—these things and many more are revealed in charming incidents about the modest little boy who foreshadows Lee the man.

When Robert E. Lee was a little boy he heard the booming of guns that announced the winning of the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. He learned The Star-Spangled Banner when it was a new song.

It was a great day in his life when General Lafayette came to call on his mother. The famous Frenchman had been a comrade of his father's in the Revolution.

He had been born in a fine home, Stratford. He was to live in a beautiful home at Arlington. He visited relatives at a great plantation house, Shirley. But his father lost all his money, and most of Robert's boyhood was spent in genteel poverty in Alexandria. He played in the meadows along the Potomac, or went on expeditions into the woods. At Christmas he joined a jolly crowd to gather holly, cedar and mistletoe. He had a host of cousins, boys and girls. There was a little negro boy who followed him around, and he loved old Nat, the chief servant of the Lee household. He had all a boy's delight in a fire, in nutting, in horseback riding.

Miss Monsell has a gift for writing of a way of life that is gone, but which was definitely an influence in the building of America. Her pictures of the Old Dominion are vivid and alive. In Lee she presents the finest product of that life.

From the dust jacket