further forward hiding her face without checking her merriment. “Crazy,” said Miss Pinckney, “but it’s better to be laughing crazy than crying crazy like some folk—here’s a quarter and get her some candy.” She put the coin on the table and marched off followed by Phyl. “She wanted to tell me something,” said Phyl as they were driving to the cemetery; “she beckoned me to her and took hold of my arm and whispered something.” “What did she say?” 126 126 Phyl, somehow, could not bring herself to betray that crazy confidence. “I don’t know, exactly, but she called me Miss Julie.” “Oh—she called you Miss Julie,” said the other. Then she relapsed into thought and nothing more was said till they reached their destination. 127 CHAPTER V Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery like everything else about Charleston shows the touch of the War. Here the soldiers lie who fought so bravely under Wade Hampton and here lies the general himself. Go south, go north, and you will not find a place touched by the War where you will not find noble memories, echoes of heroic deeds, legends of brave men. Miss Pinckney was by no means a peace party and this thought was doubtless in her head as she stood surveying the confederate graves. There were relations here and men whom she had known as a child. “That’s the War,” said she, “and people abuse war as if it was the worst thing in the world, insulting the dead. ’Clare to goodness it makes me savage to hear the pasty-faces talking of war and making plans to abolish it. It’s like hearing a lot of children making plans to abolish thunder storms. Where would America be now without the War, and where’d her history be? You tell me that. It’d just be the history of a big canning factory. These men aren’t dead, they’re still alive and fighting—fighting Chicago; fighting pork, and wheat, 128 and cotton and railway-stock and everything else that’s abolishing the soul of the nation.
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