ST. JOHN'S CHURCH OUTSIDE? God's Acre and its peaceful dead; Inside? The tumult and the throb of life; Without? Spring's air, and God's blue sky o'erhead; Within? Forebodings of a nation's strife. And now is peace: God keep their memories green— Radford, Virginia. NORA L. C. SCOTT. HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY SOMBRE sepulchre of the fallen oak and holly leaves, Pleasant playground of the wantoning Virginia creeper, Calm couch of those whose sleep so long will be unbroken, Thou holdest in thy restful, rounded bosom Thousands whom we pray to see again. Thou hast wrung our yearning hearts and laved thy mounded sod with tears, and yet we know thee for a gentle mother whose lullaby is a requiem that bespeaketh a joyous awakening. Truly thou levelest all ranks and bringest all to the dust, welcoming alike babe and warrior in thy enfolding embrace. Yet thine is an unmurmuring tenantry who neither weary nor jostle nor envy one another. In thee "God's Acre"there is a fee-simple for the high and the low, the rich and the poor, while in God Himself there is that promise of Hope which stealeth away the sting from Death. INEVITABLE HOLLYWOOD! Whether thou wearest the sombre ermine of winter, the exuberant emerald of spring, theplacid olive of midsummer or the moribund crimson of autumn, thou art ever a beautiful emblem of REST, REPOSE AND RESURRECTION. We toast thee, not with wine but with our tears, and as our votive offering we give thee that which Golconda's riches could not buy OUR LOVED ONES. EVAN R. CHESTERMAN. Richmond. VIRGINIA First to strike the tyrant's shield, VIRGINIA! WALTER EDWARD HARRIS. Washington. THE Cabin in which Mary Ingles lived on her return from captivity among the Indians. It was built in 1755, and is the oldest house in Virginia west of the Alleghany Mountains. The Mary Ingles Cabin still stands in a meadow near New River, three miles from Radford. TO MARY DRAPER INGLES THE first white bride married west of the Alleghany Mountains, heroine of real life, whose story reads like fiction! Carried, in 1755, by the Shawnee Indians from her home at Draper's Meadow, the present site of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, into the Ohio wilderness, the hardships of the journey were intensified by the pangs of maternity—a little daughter being born to her on the march. But her wonderful courage and endurance were put to a still more harrowing test, as escaping from her captors, she made her way back to her home, a distance of about seven hundred miles through the pathless forest, without other pilot than the rivers to guide her bleeding feet, without other hope to sustain her half-starved body than her luminous faith in God and her own high courage. Brave Mary Ingles! No achievement of feminine heroism and endurance in the annals of brave women is more remarkable. Southwest Virginia does well to honor So NOBLE A CHARACTER. JULIA WYATT BULLARD. |