Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
spirit that, glorious in victory, had displayed a fortitude yet greater
in defeat. They saw in every stain on those tattered standards the blood
of their noblest, bravest, and best; in every rent a proof of their
glorious courage and sacrifice. They saw in those gray and careworn
faces, in those old clothes interspersed now and then with a faded gray
uniform, the men who in the ardor of their youth had, for the South,
faced death undaunted on a hundred fields, and had never even thought it
great; men who had looked immortality in the eyes, yet had been thrown
down and trampled underfoot, and who were greater in their overthrow
than when glory poured her light upon their upturned faces. Not one of
them all but was self-sustaining, sustained by the South, or had ever
even for one moment thought in his direst extremity that he would have
what was, undone.
The crowd was immense; the people on the fashionable street up which the
procession passed were fortunate; they had the advantage of their yards
and porticos, and they threw them open to the public. Still the throng
on the sidewalks was tremendous, and just before the old veterans came
along the crush increased. As it resettled itself I became conscious
that a little old woman in a rusty black dress whom I had seen patiently
standing alone in the front line on the street corner for an hour had
lost her position, and had been pushed back against the railing, and had
an anxious, disappointed look on her face. She had a little, faded knot
of Confederate colors fastened in her old dress, and, almost hidden by
the crowd, she was looking up and down in some distress to see if she
could not again get a place from which she could see. Finally she seemed
to give it up, and stood quite still, tiptoeing now and then to try to
catch a glimpse. I saw someone about to help her when, from a gay and
crowded portico above her, a young and beautiful girl in a white dress,
whom I had been observing for some time as the life of a gay party,
as she sat in her loveliness, a queen on her throne with her courtiers
around her, suddenly arose and ran down into the street. There was a
short colloquy. The young beauty was offering something which the old
lady was declining; but it ended in the young girl leading the older
woman gently up on to her veranda and giving her the chair of state. She
was hardly seated when the old soldiers began to pass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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