"Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in Europe, I reckon;
likewise New York. But comin' home I ran up to Washington an' Lee to
visit the general lyin' there asleep, an' it just needed one glance to
assure me that the greatest an' grandest work of art in this round
world was right there before me! What do folks want to rush off to
foreign parts for, where they can't talk plain English an' a man can't
get a satisfyin' meal of home cookin', when we've got the greatest
work of art an' the best hams ever cured, right in Virginia? See
America first, I say. Why, suh, I was so glad to get back to good old
Appleboro that I let everybody else wait until I'd gone around to the
monument an' looked up at our man standin' there on top of it, an' I
found myself sayin' over the names he's guardin' as if I was sayin' my
prayers: _our names_.

"Uh huh, Europe's good enough for Europeans an' the Nawth's a God's
plenty good enough for Yankees, but Appleboro for me. Why, father,
they haven't got anything like our monument to their names!"

They haven't. And I should hate to think that any Confederate living
or dead ever even remotely resembled the gray granite one on our
monument. He is a brigandish and bearded person in a foraging cap,
leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is
buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the
back, and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of
his granite breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to
admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues
cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical;
they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of
the heart. He stands for something that is gone on the wind and the