Peculiar interest attaches to the inauguration of Memorial Day in Richmond, in 1866, when Northerners, watching Southerners cover the graves of their dead with flowers, went afterwards and did likewise, thus borrowing of us their "Decoration Day" and with it a custom we gladly share with them.[31] In Hollywood and Oakwood slept some 36,000 Southern soldiers, representing every Confederate State. On April 19, Oakwood Memorial Association "was founded by a little band in the old Third Presbyterian Church, after prayer by Rev. Dr. Proctor." The morning of May 10 a crowd gathered in St. John's Church,[32] and after simple exercises led by Dr. Price and Dr. Norwood, "the procession, numbering five hundred people, walking two and two, their arms loaded with spring's sweetest flowers, walked out to Oakwood" and strewed with these the Confederate graves. May 3, the Hollywood Memorial Association was formed, and May 31 was its first Memorial Day. The day before, an extraordinary procession wended its way to the cemetery. The young men of Richmond, the flower of the city, marched to Hollywood, armed with picks and spades, and numbering in their long line, moving with the swing of regulars, remnants of famous companies, whose gallantry had made them shining marks on many a desperate battlefield. "It was a striking scene," wrote a witness, "as the long line filed by, not as in days of yore when attired in gray and bearing the glittering muskets, they were wont to step to the strains of martial music while the Stars and Bars of the young Republic floated above them; but in citizens' garbs, bearing the peaceful implements of agriculture, performing a pilgrimage to the shrine of departed valour." It was symbolic. The South sought to honour her past in peaceful ways, and to repair by patient industry the ravages of war, wielding cheerfully weapons of progress to which her hands were as yet unaccustomed. As the soldier-citizens marched along, people old and young, by ones and twos and threes, or in organised bodies, fell into the ever-lengthening line. At the cemetery, the pick-and-spade bearers were divided into squads and companies, and under the direction of commanders, worked all day, raking off rubbish, rounding up graves, planting head-boards and otherwise bringing about order. Old men and little boys helped. Negroes faithful to the memory of dead friends and owners were there, busy as the whites in love's labour. Several men in Federal uniform lent brotherly hands. When the sun went down the place was transformed. That first fair Memorial Day looked as though it were both Sabbath and Saints' Day. Over or on doors of business houses was the legend, garlanded with flowers or framed in mourning drapery: "Closed in Honour of the Confederate Dead." Federal soldiers walking the quiet streets would pause and study these symbols of grief and reverence. Carloads of flowers poured into the city. Every part of the South in touch with Richmond by