d then a hole in the ballant: that's me. Alexander's
my name. They ca'd me Ecky when I was a boy. Eh, Ecky! ye're an awfu'
auld man!"

I had a second and sadder experience of graveyards at my next
alighting-place, the city of Muskegon, now rendered conspicuous by
the dome of the new capitol encaged in scaffolding. It was late in the
afternoon when I arrived, and raining; and as I walked in great streets,
of the very name of which I was quite ignorant--double, treble, and
quadruple lines of horse-cars jingling by--hundred-fold wires of
telegraph and telephone matting heaven above my head--huge, staring
houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either hand--the thought of
the Rue Racine, ay, and of the cabman's eating-house, brought tears to
my eyes. The whole monotonous Babel had grown, or I should rather say
swelled, with such a leap since my departure, that I must continually
inquire my way; and the very cemetery was brand new. Death, however, had
been active; the graves were already numerous, and I must pick my way
in the rain, among the tawdry sepulchres of millionnaires, and past the
plain black crosses of Hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led
me to the place that was my father's. The stone had been erected (I
knew already) "by admiring friends"; I could now judge their taste in
monuments; their taste in literature, methought, I could imagine, and I
refrained from drawing near enough to read the terms of the inscription.
But the name was in larger letters and stared at me--JAMES K. DODD.
What a singular thing is a name, I thought; how it clings to a man, and
continually misrepresents, and then survives him; and it flashed across
my mind, with a mixture of regret and bitter mirth, that I had never
known, and now probably never should know, what the K had represented.
King, Kilter, Kay, Kaiser, I went, running over names at random, and
then stumbled with ludicrous misspelling on Kornelius, and had nearly
laughed aloud. I have never been more childish; I suppose (although the
deeper voices of my nature seemed all dumb) because I have never been
more moved. And at this last incongruous antic of my nerves, I was
seized with a panic of remorse and fled the cemetery.

Scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience in Muskegon, where,
nevertheless, I lingered, visiting my father's circle, for some days. It
was in piety to him I lingered; and I might have spared myself the pain.
His memory was already quite