The late accident in the President's family.
--The late sad accident and terrible bereavement suffered by the President and family, called forth the deepest sympathies of the public. From a private letter of a Confederate officer--though not intended for publication — the Selma Dispatch copies the following description of the scene of the accident, and the President's household, upon the occurrence of the sudden affection:‘ Florence, S C, May 3.--I left Richmond on Sunday morning, 1st of May. On the evening before I found myself at the President's house up stairs, by a sad and singular accident. Having finished all my business with the Department I strolled with Judge H of Mississippi, to look at the city, and passing the President's mansion we paused to look at the scenery beyond, when a little girl ran out of the house crying to the next door and pulled the bell violently; in a minute she was followed by another, and then by a little boy the picture of the most utter desolation and despair, and then by a negro woman, from whom we learned that the President's little son was badly hurt, and no white person except these three little children at home.
’ We at once ran in and found the little fellow (about five years old) in the arms of a negro men, and almost dead. Dispatching a servant for a doctor we began to run him with camphor and brandy and put mustard on his feet and wrists, an in a short time he began to breathe better, and opened his eyes, and we all thought he was reviving, but it was the last bright gleaming of the wick in the socket before the light is extinguished for ever.
Mr.Davis and Mrs. Davis came in while we held the little fellow rubbing him. She relieved hereof in a flood of tears and wild inmentations; he knelt by his side and clasped the dying boy's hands in his own thin attenuated fingers. As he thus held his hands and watched the boy die, such a look of petrified, unutterable anguish I never saw. His pale, thin intellectual face, already oppressed with a thousand national troubles, that now so imminently threaten our seemed suddenly ready to burst with unspeakable grief, and thus transfixed late a stony rigidity.
The little boy had fallen from a gallery about fifteen fact, on a brick pavement, and lay there some time before he was discovered. His head was confused, and I think his cheat much injured internally. The little boy who died was named Jno. He had beautiful black eyes and hair and was a very handsome boy. The other little fellow, so stricken with grief, named Jeff, was some six or seven years old, an intelligent, independent little fellow, with the tenderest heart under a rough exterior.
When I recall the picture of our poor President, grief-stricken, speechless, tearless, crushed, I can scarcely refrain from tears myself, even now. No man could have witnessed that scene and ever find it in his heart again to abuse that great and pure man, who, in the exercise of great powers confided to him by a generous people, has shown more continence and moderation than Washington.
The President's little boys were dressed in gray jeans and barefaced, and Jeff, the sturdy the fellow, had on a broad-brim hat of oat straw. The President himself was dressed in a plain suit of gray.
