Excerpt from Robert E. Lee: A Story and a Play Once upon a time in beautiful Virginia there lived a little boy named Robert Edward Lee. It was in the days before the Civil War when, if we may believe all we hear, all the women were charming, and all the men were gentlemen. The boy's father was one of the most gallant of the gentlemen, for he was Light Horse Harry of Revolutionary War fame. He it was who said of Washington, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Mr. Lee did not realize, then, how many people would apply this same remark to his own son. No doubt little Robert got in and out of as many scrapes as any other active little boy, but all the time he was hard at work learning to control his temper.

I started to say he was learning to be a gentleman, but that was something he did not have to learn. A gentleman he was by nature, as the Lees of Virginia had been for generations. He did not have a very happy boyhood. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy.

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