Dicky sent a clipping from a Roseboro newspaper that tells the story of Bobby’s heroism on shipboard coming from one of the lands of the Far East. I remember that story. It was some years ago. In mid-sea the engines broke down, the boat sprung a leak, and the men were forced to bail the water from the boat. No ship came near, and one night a frightful storm swept the sea. With the boat at the mercy of the waves the firemen deserted the boilers. It was then that the blood of Bobby’s ancestors spoke in him; Old Governor Haralson, Bobby’s grandfather, was a leader of men, could sway them. And father told me that Bobby’s young father in a charge at the battle of Shilo was a figure he never forgot. He said the young Colonel as he swept into battle at the head of his men wore a beautiful, uplifted, unearthly sort of expression and that he, my father, had often heard him say he had never felt the sensation of fear on a battlefield. So I know just how Bobby Haralson loomed above the discouraged men that night, just how steady his voice was when he told them that the firemen had deserted their posts saying it was death to go down into the hold, but that he was going, and if they were men they would follow him. Wet and naked and blistered in the water that was waist-deep in the ship’s hold, death within and death without, with no hope of saving the ship, with no help possible had help been near, struggling to hold their places along the rope line they hauled the buckets of water up, gaining perceptibly then losing again, but sending a song up whether there was the gain of an inch of water or that much loss—a song that rose above the roar of the sea, hungry for what surely seemed its prey, and the hiss of the great boilers. When we left Roseboro I was fourteen. Bobby must have been eighteen. A fence divided his house from ours. There was a side gate, for the families were intimate, but, mostly, he leaped it. Do I remember Bobby? I have not thought of him in years, but to-night some little door of the brain long closed opens and out of it comes my almost forgotten boy friend Bobby, like a ghost. Why, just that minute I saw his little flashing smile. It came right through the moonlit window as a friendly hand reaches out to one on the street of a strange city. It must be very late, but how wide awake I am. And how sweet the tuberoses there in the border under my window are. They seem to float in still pools of moonlight. As they pour their heavy fragrance over me the fancy comes, born of the silver, moon-flooded night, I suppose, that they are trying to tell me something.