informing the apparent confusion, there was some crude belief that the
symbol of material success is size, and that size in itself, regardless
of quality or condition, is civilization. For the many-headed god is a
god of sacrifice. He makes a wilderness of beauty and calls it progress.

Long ago the village had disappeared. Long ago the spacious southern
homes, with their walled gardens of box and roses and aromatic shrubs in
spring, had receded into the shadowy memories of those whom the modern
city pointed out, with playful solicitude, as "the oldest inhabitants."
None except the very oldest inhabitants could remember those friendly
and picturesque streets, deeply shaded by elms and sycamores; those
hospitable houses of gray stucco or red brick which time had subdued to
a delicate rust-colour; those imposing Doric columns, or quaint Georgian
doorways; those grass-grown brick pavements, where old ladies in
perpetual mourning gathered for leisurely gossip; those wrought-iron
gates that never closed; those unshuttered windows, with small gleaming
panes, which welcomed the passer-by in winter; or those gardens, steeped
in the fragrance of mint and old-fashioned flowers, which allured the
thirsty visitor in summer. These things had vanished years ago; yet
beneath the noisy commercial city the friendly village remained. There
were hours in the lavender-tinted twilights of spring, or on autumn
afternoons, while the shadows quivered beneath the burnished leaves and
the sunset glowed with the colour of apricots, when the watcher might
catch a fleeting glimpse of the past. It may have been the drop of dusk
in the arched recess of a Colonial doorway; it may have been the faint
sunshine on the ivy-grown corner of an old brick wall; it may have been
the plaintive melody of a negro market-man in the street; or it may have
been the first view of the Culpeper's gray and white mansion; but, in
one or all of these things, there were moments when the ghost of the
buried village stirred and looked out, and a fragrance that was like the