that highly wrought,
richly colored style which seems indigenous to Southern soil.

"Some way, the whole thing reminds me of a funeral," thought the keeper.

Miss Ward entered, and the room bloomed at once; at least that is what a
lover would have said. Rodman, however, merely noticed that she bloomed,
and not the room, and he said to himself that she would not bloom long
if she continued to live in such a moldy place. Their conversation in
these days was excessively polite, shortened to the extreme minimum
possible, and conducted without the aid of the eyes, at least on one
side. Rodman had discovered that Miss Ward never looked at him, and so
he did not look at her--that is, not often; he was human, however, and
she was delightfully pretty. On this occasion they exchanged exactly
five sentences, and then he departed, but not before his quick eyes had
discovered that the rest of the house was in even worse condition than
this parlor, which, by the way, Miss Ward considered quite a grand
apartment; she had been down near the coast, trying to teach school, and
there the desolation was far greater than here, both armies having
passed back and forward over the ground, foragers out, and the torch at
work more than once.

"Will there ever come a change for the better?" thought the keeper, as
he walked homeward. "What an enormous stone has got to be rolled up
hill! But at least, John Rodman, _you_ need not go to work at it; _you_
are not called upon to lend your shoulder."

None the less, however, did he call out Pomp that very afternoon and
sternly teach him "E" and "F" using the smooth white sand for a
blackboard, and a stick for chalk. Pomp's primer was a Government
placard hanging on the wall of the office. It read as follows:

IN THIS CEMETERY REPOSE THE REMAINS

OF

FOURTEEN THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
UNITED STATES SOLDIERS.

"Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream;
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

"Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not written of the soul!"

"The only known instance of the Government's condescending to poetry,"
the keeper had thought, when he first read this placard. It was placed
there for the instruction and edification of visitors; but, no visitors
coming, he took the lib