They saw in every stain on those tattered standards
the blood of their noblest, bravest, and best; in every rent
a proof of their glorious courage and sacrifice. They saw in those
gray and careworn faces, in those old clothes interspersed now and then
with a faded gray uniform, the men who in the ardor of their youth had,
for the South, faced death undaunted on a hundred fields, and had never
even thought it great; men who had looked immortality in the eyes,
yet had been thrown down and trampled underfoot, and who were greater
in their overthrow than when glory poured her light upon their upturned faces.
Not one of them all but was self-sustaining, sustained by the South,
or had ever even for one moment thought in his direst extremity
that he would have what was, undone.
The crowd was immense; the people on the fashionable street
up which the procession passed were fortunate; they had the advantage
of their yards and porticos, and they threw them open to the public.
Still the throng on the sidewalks was tremendous, and just before
the old veterans came along the crush increased. As it resettled itself
I became conscious that a little old woman in a rusty black dress
whom I had seen patiently standing alone in the front line
on the street corner for an hour had lost her position, and had been
pushed back against the railing, and had an anxious, disappointed look
on her face.
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