And this man, who had from Kings and Emperors more decorations than any American has ever received, and for whom Europe had ever ready the highest honors and greatest praise, was ignored by his own government, to which he gave his life's work. No word of thanks, no tribute of esteem, no reward, was ever given him. A bill to erect a monument to him lies now rotting in some pigeonhole in Congress. But an effort to renew this is underway. ARCHIBALD MCPHERSON Curiously enough, no more memory is left to Fredericksburg of Archibald McPherson than the tombstone under the mock orange tree in St. George's Church, the tablets to his memory in the old charity school on Hanover Street (now the Christian Science Church) and a few shadowy legends and unmeaning dates. He was born in Scotland and died in Fredericksburg in 1854. He was a member of St. George's Church and vestry. But what manner of man he was, the few recorded acts we know will convey to every one. He established a Male Charity School with his own funds principally, and took a deep interest in it, and, dying, he left the small fortune he had accumulated by Scotch thrift "to the poor of the town," and provided means of dispensing the interest on this sum for charity throughout the years to come. Most of this fund was wiped out by depreciation of money, etc., during the Civil War. _Men of Modern Times_ _Soldiers, Adventurers and Sailors, Heroes and Artists, mingle here._ A prophet without honor in his own country was Moncure Daniel Conway because, a Fredericksburger and a Southerner, he opposed slavery. But his genius won him world praise, and later, honer in his own country. Born in 1832, near Falmouth, to which village his people moved later, the child of Walker Peyton Conway and Marguerite Daniel Conway he inherited from a long line of ancestry, a brilliant intellect and fearlessness to tread the paths of freedom. The difficult studious child was too much for his teacher, Miss Gaskins, of Falmouth, so he was sent, at the age of ten, to Fredericksburg Classical and Mathematical Academy, originally John Marye's famous school, and made rapid progress. His hero was his great uncle, Judge R. C. L. Moncure, of Glencairne, and his early memoirs are full of loving gratitude for the great man's toleration and help. The Methodism of his parents did not hold him, for he several times attended the services at St. George's Church. The wrongs of slavery he saw, and after he entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in his fifteenth year, he found an anti-slavery professor, McClintock, who influenced him and encouraged his dawning agnosticism. His cousin, John M. Daniel, editor of the Richmond Examiner, became, in 1848, a leading factor in Conway's life, encouraging his literary efforts and publishing many of his contributions.