In freedom to honour the Confederate dead by public parade, Virginia was more fortunate than North Carolina. In Raleigh, the people were not allowed to march in procession to the cemetery for five long years. Yet, even so, the old North State faithfully observed the custom of decorating her graves at fixed seasons, the people going out to the cemetery by twos and threes. Indeed, the claim has been made that Dixie's first Memorial Day was observed in Raleigh rather than in Richmond, and the story of it is too sad for telling. March 12, 1866, Mrs. Mary Williams wrote the "Columbus Times," of Georgia, a letter, from which I quote: "The ladies are engaged in ornamenting and improving that portion of the city cemetery sacred to the memory of our gallant Confederate dead.... We beg the assistance of the press and the ladies throughout the South to aid us in the effort to set apart a certain day to be observed, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and to be handed down through time as a religious custom of the South, in wreathing the graves of our martyred dead with flowers." All our cities, towns and hamlets shared in the honour of originating Memorial Day, for, throughout the fair land of Dixie, soon as flowers began to bloom, her people began to cover graves with them; and the North did likewise. In reading the recently published "History of the Confederated Memorial Associations of the South," I am newly impressed with the devotion of Southern women, their promptness, energy and resourcefulness in gathering from hillside and valley their scattered dead and providing marked and sheltered sepulture and monuments when there was so little money in their land. I am impressed, too, with the utter lack of sectional bitterness in this volume, which consists chiefly of unpretentious reports of work done. Here and there is a word of grateful acknowledgment to former foes for aid rendered. The simple records throb with a deep human interest to which the heart of the world might make response.