that sits in a broad smooth
lawn with elm trees on it, stands an easel. On the easel is a
picture--an enlarged crayon drawing of a straight, handsome young
fellow in a captain's uniform. One hand is in his coat, and the other
at his hip. His head is thrown back with a fierce determination into
the photographer's iron rest and all together the picture is marked
with the wrinkled front of war. For over one corner of the easel hangs
a sword with an ivory handle, and upon it is an inscription
proclaiming the fact that the sword was presented to Captain Philemon
R. Ward by his company for gallant conduct on the field of battle on
the night of August 4, 1861. Above the easel in the corner hangs
another picture--that of a sweet-faced old man of seventy, beaming
rather benignly over his white lawn necktie. The forty-five years that
have passed between the two faces have trimmed the hair away from the
temples and the brow, have softened the mouth, and have put patience
into the eyes--the patience of a great faith often tried but never
broken. The five young women of the household know that the crayon
portrait on the bamboo easel is highly improper as a parlour
ornament--for do they not teach school, and do they not take all the
educational journals and the crafty magazines of art? But the hand
that put it there was proud of its handiwork, and she who hung the
sword upon the easel is gone away, so the girls smile at the fierce
young boyish face in the picture as they pass it, and throw a kiss at
the face above it, and the easel is not moved.

And the man,--the tall old man with a slight stoop in his shoulders,
the old man who wears the alpaca coat and the white lawn tie seen in
the upper picture,--sometimes he wanders into the stately front room
with a finger in a census bulletin as a problem in his head creases
his brow--and the sight of the sword always makes him smile, and
sometimes the smile is a chuckle that stirs the cockles of his heart.

For his mind goes back to that summer night of August 4, 1861, and he
sees himself riding on a horse with a little boy behind with his arms
in the soldier's belt. It is dusk, and "C" Company on foot is filing
down a Missouri hill. It is a muddy road, and the men are tired and
dirty. There is no singing now. A man driving an ox team has turned
out of the road to let the soldiers pass. Some one in the line asks
the man, "Where's Price?"

"Over the hill yonder," replies the man, pointing