better scheme for the universe, a plan where we should not flourish at
each other's expense, where the lion should be lying down with the lamb

now, where good and evil should not be husband and wife, indissolubly
married by a law of creation.

With such highly novel thoughts as these I descended the steps from my
researches at the corner of Court and Chancel streets an hour earlier

than my custom, because--well, I couldn't, that day, stand Cowpens for
another minute. Up at the corner of Court and Worship the people were

going decently into church; it was a sweet, gentle late Friday in Lent. I
had intended keeping out-of-doors, to smell the roses in the gardens, to

bask in the soft remnant of sunshine, to loiter and peep in through the
Kings Port garden gates, up the silent walks to the silent verandas. But

the slow stream of people took me, instead, into church with the deeply
veiled ladies of Kings Port, hushed in their perpetualmourning for not

only, I think, those husbands and brothers and sons whom the war had
turned to dust forty years ago, but also for the Cause, the lost Cause,

that died with them. I sat there among these Christians suckled in a
creed outworn, envying them their well-regulated faith; it, too, was part

of the town's repose and sweetness, together with the old-fashioned roses
and the old-fashioned ladies. Men, also, were in the congregation--not

many, to be sure, but all unanimously wearing that expression of
remarkable virtue which seems always to visit, when he goes to church,

the average good fellow who is no better than he should be. I became,
myself, filled with this same decorous inconsistency, and was singing the

hymn, when I caught sight of John Mayrant. What lady was he with? It was
just this that most annoyingly I couldn't make out, because the unlucky

disposition of things hid it. I caught myself craning my neck and singing
the hymn simultaneously and with no difficulty, because all my childhood

was in that hymn; I couldn't tell when I hadn't known words and music by
heart. Who was she? I tried for a clear view when we sat down, and also,

let me confess, when we knelt down; I saw even less of her so; and my
hope at the end of the service was dashed by her slow but entire

disappearance amid the engulfing exits of the other ladies. I followed
where I imagined she had gone, out by a side door, into the beautiful

graveyard; but among the flowers and monuments she was not, nor was he;
and next I saw, through the iron gate, John Mayrant in the street,

walking with his intimate aunt and her more severe sister, and Miss La
Heu. I somewhat superfluously hastened to the gate and greeted them, to

which they responded with polite, masterly discouragement. He, however,
after taking off his hat to them, turned back, and I watched them pursuing

their leisurely, reticent course toward the South Place. Why should the
old ladies strike me as looking like a tremendously proper pair of

conspirators? I was wondering this as I turned back among the tombs, when
I perceived John Mayrant coming along one of the churchyard paths. His

approach was made at right angles with that of another personage, the
respectful negro custodian of the place. This dignitary was evidently

hoping to lead me among the monuments, recite to me their old histories,
and benefit by my consequentgratitude; he had even got so far as smiling

and removing his hat when John Mayrant stopped him. The young man hailed
the negro by his first name with that particular and affectionate

superiority which few Northerners can understand and none can acquire,
and which resembles nothing so much as the way in which you speak to your

old dog who has loved you and followed you, because you have cared for him.
"Not this time," John Mayrant said. "I wish to show our relics to this

gentleman myself--if he will permit me?" This last was a question put to
me with a courteousformality, a formality which a few minutes more were

to see smashed to smithereens.
I told him that I should consider myself undeservedly privileged.

"Some of these people are my people," he said, beginning to move.
The old custodian stood smiling, familiar, respectful, disappointed.

"Some of 'em my people, too, Mas' John," he cannily observed.
I put a little silver in his hand. "Didn't I see a box somewhere," I

said, "with something on it about the restoration of the church?"
"Something on it, but nothing in it!" exclaimed Mayrant; at which

moderate pleasantry the custodian broke into extreme African merriment
and ambled away. "You needn't have done it," protested the Southerner,

and I naturally claimed my stranger's right to pay my respects in this
manner. Such was our introduction, agreeable and unusual.

A silence then unexpectedly ensued and the formality fell colder than
ever upon us. The custodian's departure had left us alone, looking at

each other across all the unexpressed knowledge that each knew the other
had. Mayrant had come impulsively back to me from his aunts, without

stopping to think that we had never yet exchanged a word; both of us were
now brought up short, and it was the cake that was speaking volubly in

our self-conscious dumbness. It was only after this brief, deep gap of
things unsaid that John Mayrant came to the surface again, and began a

conversation of which, on both our parts, the first few steps were taken
on the tiptoes of an archaic politeness; we trod convention like a

polished French floor; you might have expected us, after such deliberate
and graceful preliminaries, to dance a verbal minuet.

We, however, danced something quite different, and that conversation
lasted during many days, and led us, like a road, up hill and down dale

to a perfect acquaintance. No, not perfect, but delightful; to the end he
never spoke to me of the matter most near him, and I but honor him the

more for his reticence.
Of course his first remark had to be about Kings Port and me; had he

understood rightly that this was my first visit?
My answer was equally traditional.

It was, next, correct that he should allude to the weather; and his
reference was one of the two or three that it seems a stranger's destiny

always to hear in a place new to him: he apologized for the weather--so
cold a season had not, in his memory, been experienced in Kings Port; it

was to the highest point exceptional.
I exclaimed that it had been, to my Northern notions, delightfully mild

for March. "Indeed," I continued, "I have always said that if March could
be cut out of our Northern climate, as the core is cut out of an apple, I

should be quite satisfied with eleven months, instead of twelve. I think
it might prolong one's youth."

The fire of that season lighted in his eyes, but he still stepped upon
polished convention. He assured me that the Southern September hurricane

was more deplorable than any Northern March could be. "Our zone should be
called the Intemperate zone," said he.

"But never in Kings Port," I protested; "with your roses out-of-doors--
and your ladies indoors!"

He bowed. "You pay us a high compliment."
I smiled urbanely. "If the truth is a compliment!"

"Our young ladies are roses," he now admitted with a delicate touch of
pride.

"Don't forget your old ones! I never shall."
There was pleasure in his face at this tribute, which, he could see, came

from the heart. But, thus pictured to him, the old ladies brought a
further idea quite plainly into his expression; and he announced it.

"Some of them are not without thorns."
"What would you give," I quickly replied, "for anybody--man or woman--who

could not, on an occasion, make themselves sharply felt?"
To this he returned a full but somewhat absent-minded assent. He seemed

to be reflecting that he himself didn't care to be the "occasion" upon
which an old lady rose should try her thorns; and I was inclined to

suspect that his intimate aunt had been giving him a wigging.
Anyhow, I stood ready to keep it up, this interchange of lofty

civilities. I, too, could wear the courtly red-heels of
eighteenth-century procedure, and for just as long as his Southern

up-bringing inclined him to wear them; I hadn't known Aunt Carola for
nothing! But we, as I have said, were not destined to dance any minuet.

We had been moving, very gradually, and without any attention to our
surroundings, to and fro in the beautiful sweet churchyard. Flowers were

everywhere, growing, budding, blooming; color and perfume were parts of
the very air, and beneath these pretty and ancient tombs, graven with old

dates and honorable names, slept the men and women who had given Kings
Port her high place is; in our history. I have never, in this country,

seen any churchyardcomparable to this one; happy, serene dead, to sleep
amid such blossoms and consecration! Good taste prevailed here; distin-

guished men lay beneath memorial stones that came no higher than your
waist or shoulder; there was a total absence of obscure grocers reposing