But not long ago an old darky whom I sometimes saw wandering around in the neglected graveyard near, told me better. It is an old graveyard, now full and neglected. Under a big tree I can see the square tombs of the father and mother, sisters and brothers of James K. Polk. I say graveyard purposely. Nowadays, it is true, they call it cemetery. Cemetery is Frenchy, from Latin, and I suppose the name has been adopted because it sounds better than the Saxon graveyard. That other Saxon word, God’s Acre, sounds better. As if we could tone down the hideousness of skeleton death with a French cutaway! And I hope you will pardon this digression when I tell you I hate everything American that patterns after French, and I love everything English that clings to Anglo-Saxon. William the Norman was a free booter, a robber and a bully, and for my part I am sorry that old Saxon Harold did not wipe the face of the earth up with him and his parley-vouzing crowd of rakes at Hastings. England has never had a king since that was half the man Alfred was. We should have missed all the mean and villainous Johns and Richards, the devilish Henrys, the profligate Charleses and the pigheaded, blood-pudding and brainless Georges. And I would not allow a foreign grammar of any kind to be taught in our public schools. For is it not ideas which count, and not words? One flag and one language, and the man who tried to pull either of them down I would—well, you have heard the rest. Lord help us! Starving out the most glorious, the most beautiful, the strongest and the grandest language in the world, the language of Chaucer, Milton, Burns and Byron, of Emerson and Carlyle, to teach our children a mongrel mixture that tends to mongrel morals! But, as I was saying, the old darky told me about a year ago who the lonely occupant of the neglected grave was. “Boss,” he said, as he sat up against the slab that answered for a headboard, “I thou’t eberybody knowed dis grabe was de grabe of de man dat was kicked to deff by a stallion on de public square sixty years dis spring. Dat’s all I knowed about him, an’ dey buried him heah.” After that I would often find myself thinking of the unknown being who slept there. Did he have a family, and what became of them? What strain of horse could in those days have been so vicious? What stallion kicked him? Stump-the-Dealer? No; Stump was too lazy to kick. Kittrell’s Hal? He was a baby. Could it have been—ah, yes, happy thought! I have it. It was one of those new trotting St. Lawrences, or Messengers, that Major Andrew Polk introduced in the country about that time. The major was showing him off the first Monday on the square; a crowd of rustics gathered around, thinking he was gentle, like our Hals; one got too close to his heels—a flash of a leg—a crash—a bursted skull—a forsaken grave—and the world moves on.