Mr. Tinsley died in Staunton, after a long and painful illness, August
21, 1902.




OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN I


I saw the Sweet Harbinger of Spring last week. A violet? No. A swallow?
No. A bud? No. Ah! no; put up your encyclopedia of Spring information
and I'll tell you. It was the annual boy with his shoes off for the
first time since the warm weather. He stepped gingerly; he stood still
longer than usual; he hoisted the bottom of his foot for inspection
often; he let a cat go by, though a rock lay in a yard of him; he
picked out a velvety place on the tan-bark sidewalk before he put his
feet firmly down and squared himself on them to give the two-finger
whistle for his chum, which is the terror to the nervous. Much of the
boy had gone out of him. He moved with the motion and sloth of decrepit
age. Next week you will not know him for the same boy. His feet will
be hardened, he will dance over the macadam mixed streets with the
callosity of a stone-crusher, and the fugacious cat will be lucky if
it gets its tail through the fence in time. The mourner's bench humility
of today will have changed to the noisy glee of the hardened criminal.
His baseball practice will pervade the middle of every street, and his
large and assorted stock of general trouble and annoyance will be
displayed under all our noses with the request that we will call and
examine before purchasing elsewhere. I cannot understand how any man
can be indifferent to the blessings of the church, when he remembers