be replaced, it was thought, by some more substantial monument at the end of the war; but the end of the war brought the consciousness of dire poverty that could hardly furnish food for the living, and so it was sadly resolved rather than leave these ghastly and decaying reminders of individual suffering and sacrifice to level the whole field and sow it in grass, but not until a pious soul, an English artist who bore the un-English name of Scharf, had recorded each name and the place of burial on an elaborate plat. Still I cannot forbear to contribute my rude shingle here and there to the memory of my comrades. The staff-officer mentioned here was George H. Williamson, of Maryland. Two years before I made his acquaintance Mr. William M. Blackford, of Lynchburg, wrote in his diary, since privately printed, under the date July 25, 1862: Williamson, an interesting man, educated at Harvard and abroad, was a rising lawyer in Baltimore when the war broke out and he enlisted as a private in a Maryland regiment.

A little more than a year afterwards, in Early's Valley campaign,—a rude school of warfare,—I was serving as a volunteer aide on General Gordon's staff. The day before the disaster of Fisher's Hill I was ordered, together with another staff officer, to accompany the general on a ride to the front. The general had a well-known weakness for inspecting the outposts,—a weakness that made a position in his suite somewhat precarious. The officer with whom I was riding had not been with us long, and when he joined the staff had just recovered from wounds and imprisonment. A man of winning appearance, sweet temper, and attractive manners, he soon made friends of the military family, and I never learned to love a man so much in so brief an acquaintance, though hearts knit quickly in the stress of war. He was highly educated, and foreign residence and travel had widened his vision without affecting the simple faith and thorough consecration of the Christian. Here let me say that the bearing of the Confederates is not to be understood without taking into account the deep religious feeling of the army and its great leaders. It is an historical element, like any other, and is not to be passed over in summing up the forces of the conflict. "A soldier without religion," says a Prussian officer, who knew our army as well as the German, "is an instrument without value"; and it is not unlikely that the knowledge of the part that faith played in sustaining the Southern people may have lent emphasis to the expression of his conviction.

We rode together towards the front, and as we rode our talk fell on Goethe and on Faust, and of all passages the soldiers' song came up to my lips,—the song of soldiers of fortune, not the chant of men whose business it was to defend their country. Two lines, however, were significant:—

We reached the front. An occasional "zip" gave warning that the sharpshooters were not asleep, and the quick eye of the general saw that our line needed rectification and how. Brief orders were given to the officer in command. My comrade was left to aid in carrying them out. The rest of us withdrew. Scarcely had we ridden a hundred yards towards camp when a shout was heard, and, turning round, we saw one of the men running after us. "The captain had been killed." The peace of heaven was on his face, as I gazed on the noble features that afternoon. The bullet had passed through his official papers and found his heart. He had received his discharge, and the glorious reward had been won.

This is the other picture that the talk of the two old soldiers called up,—dead Confederate against living Federal; and these two pictures stand out before me again, as I am trying to make others understand and to understand myself what it was to be a Southern man twenty-five years ago; what it was to accept with the whole heart the creed of the Old South. The image of the living Federal bids me refrain from harsh words in the presence of those who were my captors. The dead Confederate bids me uncover the sacred memories that the dust of life's Appian Way hides from the tenderest and truest of those whose business it is to live and work. For my dead comrade of the Valley campaign is one of many; some of them my friends, some of them my pupils as well. The 18th of July, 1861, laid low one of my Princeton College room-mates; on the 21st, the day of the great battle, the other fell,—both bearers of historic names, both upholding the cause of their State with as unclouded a conscience as any saint in the martyrology ever wore; and from that day to the end, great battle and outpost skirmish brought me, week by week, a personal loss in men of the same type.

The surrender of the Spartans on the island of Sphacteria was a surprise to friend and foe alike; and the severe historian of the Peloponnesian war pauses to record the answer of a Spartan to the jeering question of one of the allies of the Athenians,—a question which implied that the only brave Spartans were those who had been slain. The answer was tipped with Spartan wit; the only thing Spartan, as some one has said, in the whole un-Spartan affair. "The arrow," said he, "would be of great price if it distinguished the brave men from the cowards." But it did seem to us, in our passionate grief, that the remorseless bullet, the remorseless shell, had picked out the bravest and the purest. It is an old cry,—

Still, when Schiller says in the poem just quoted,

his illustration is only half right. The Greek Thersites did not return to claim a pension.