erty of using it as a primer for Pomp. The large
letters served the purpose admirably, and Pomp learned the entire
quotation; what he thought of it has not transpired. Miss Ward came over
daily to see her cousin. At first she brought him soups and various
concoctions from her own kitchen--the leaky cavern, once the
dining-room, where the soldier had taken refuge after his last dismissal
from hospital; but the keeper's soups were richer, and free from the
taint of smoke; his martial laws of neatness even disorderly old Pomp
dared not disobey, and the sick man soon learned the difference. He
thanked the girl, who came bringing the dishes over carefully in her own
dimpled hands, and then, when she was gone, he sent them untasted away.
By chance Miss Ward learned this, and wept bitter tears over it; she
continued to come, but her poor little soups and jellies she brought no
more.

One morning in May the keeper was working near the flag-staff, when his
eyes fell upon a procession coming down the road which led from the town
and turning toward the cemetery. No one ever came that way: what could
it mean? It drew near, entered the gate, and showed itself to be negroes
walking two and two--old uncles and aunties, young men and girls, and
even little children, all dressed in their best; a very poor best,
sometimes gravely ludicrous imitations of "ole mars'" or "ole miss',"
sometimes mere rags bravely patched together and adorned with a strip of
black calico or rosette of black ribbon; not one was without a badge of
mourning. All carried flowers, common blossoms from the little gardens
behind the cabins that stretched around the town on the out-skirts--the
new forlorn cabins with their chimneys of piled stones and ragged
patches of corn; each little darkey had his bouquet and marched solemnly
along, rolling his eyes around, but without even the beginning of a
smile, while the elders moved forward with gravity, the bubbling,
irrepressible gayety of the negro subdued by the new-born dignity of the
freedman.

"Memorial Day," thought the keeper; "I had forgotten it."

"Will you do us de hono', sah, to take de head ob de processio', sah?"
said the leader, with a ceremonious bow. Now, the keeper had not much
sympathy with the strewing of flowers, North or South; he had seen the
beautiful ceremony more than once turned into a political demonstration.
Here, however, in this small, isolated, interior town, there was nothing
of that kind