Now I’m forcibly reminded, When I see them riding there, One moment in the saddle And the next one in the air, That the saddest sham in nature That I ever came across Is a hundred-dollar saddle On a twenty-dollar horse! And again I’m just reminded, When I see their tandem teams And all the traps and trappings Of their wildest English dreams, That you’re always sure to notice In their heavy, rumbling gigs, The homeliest looking women In the foreignest-looking rigs! And yet again I notice, With a mild, complacent smile, That th’ eternal laws of fitness Are at work there all the while. And I grant them due forgiveness, Let them rip it as they be— For they dock their horses’ tails To match the owner’s pedigree! THE GRAVE ON THE BLUFF The most beautiful of all beautiful rivers—bold-bluffed and crooked, darkening in shadow or shimmering in sunlight, and never yet desecrated by the touch of a wheel of commerce—is the Duck, rising among the foothills to the east and flowing through the blue limestone of this Niagara period, like the Hudson, to the Cumberland. It flows through middle Tennessee and past the town I call my home. Many are the picturesque spots on its banks. My favorite one is a huge projecting rock, protected by large upright ones nearly as immense, and shooting out over tier upon tier of rocks, down a hundred feet below, to where the river runs like life—now in sunshine, now in shadow. On this rock, sheltered by others which form a kind of background, I love to take the lap-robe from the buggy, spread it out, stretch out and enjoy the scenery beyond—the valley rolling away, the bend after bend of the river, with the water flashing between the iron bridge that spans from rock to rock, the everlasting hills and the eternal skies. There is only one thing to mar the beauty of this place. In ten feet of my rock is a neglected grave. The mound is sunken around it, clearly defining the outlines. Even the bluegrass refuses to grow on it, it is so uncanny. I had often wondered whose grave this was, neglected, unkept, forgotten. “Perhaps,” I said, often to myself, “it is the grave of some Federal soldier, buried far away from home. No doubt he fell in Hood’s raid, when that soldier turned his back on Atlanta and struck out for Tennessee, sweeping everything before him to Nashville. Somewhere in the North there is an unknown grave in a human heart. Or, it is just as apt to be,” I would add, “one of those half-clad, half-fed Johnny Rebs, frozen in that November’s sleet, and thawed out in the withering fire of Franklin. Foot-sore, heart-sore, wounded and sick, he straggled forty miles from Nashville, trying to follow Hood’s forlorn hope back to the Tennessee River, and died here. Poor fellow, whoever he was!”