' In an inscription on one side
his eye caught a familiar name. Shaking with ex-
citement, he craned his body across the wall and
read:
HAZEN'S BRIGADE
to
The Memory of Its Soldiers
who fell at
Stone River, Dec. 31, 1862.
The man fell back from the wall, faint and sick.
Almost within an arm's length was a little depression
in the earth; it had been filled by a recent rain--a
pool of clear water. He crept to it to revive himself,
lifted the upper part of his body on his trembling
arms, thrust forward his head and saw the reflection
of his face, as in a mirror. He uttered a terrible cry.
His arms gave way; he fell, face downward, into
the pool and yielded up the life that had spanned
another life.
A BABY TRAMP
IF YOU had seen little Jo standing at the street corner
in the rain, you would hardly have admired him. It
was apparently an ordinary autumn rainstorm, but
the water which fell upon Jo (who was hardly old
enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps
did not come under the law of impartial distribu-
tion) appeared to have some property peculiar to
itself: one would have said it was dark and adhesive
--sticky. But that could hardly be so, even in Black-
burg, where things certainly did occur that were a
good deal out of the common.
For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower
of small frogs had fallen, as is credibly attested by a
contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding
with a somewhat obscure statement to the effect that
the chronicler considered it good growing-weather for
Frenchmen.
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