“Watch the people!” he dashed on eagerly.  “Wonderful how they love these old soldiers, isn’t it?—­they’d give ’em anything!  And what a fine thing that is for them!—­for the people, not the soldiers, I mean.  I tell you we all give too much time to practical things—­business—­making money—­taking things away from each other.  It’s a fine thing to have a day now and then which appeals to just the other side of us—­a regular sentimental spree.  Do you see what I mean?  Maybe I’m talking like an ass....  But when you talk about Americans, Mr. Queed—­let me tell you that there isn’t a State in the country that is raising better Americans than we are raising right here in this city.  We’re as solid for the Union as Boston.  But that isn’t saying that we have forgotten all about the biggest happening in our history—­the thing that threw over our civilization, wiped out our property, and turned our State into a graveyard.  If we forgot that, we wouldn’t be Americans, because we wouldn’t be men.”

He went on fragmentarily, ever and anon interrupting himself to give individual ovations to his heroes and his gods:—­

“Through the North and West you may have one old soldier to a village; here we have one to a house.  For you it was a foreign war, which meant only dispatches in the newspapers.  For us it was a war on our own front lawns, and the way we followed it was by the hearses backing up to the door.  You can hardly walk a mile in any direction out of this city without stumbling upon an old breastworks.  And in the city—­well, you know all the great old landmarks, all around us as we stand here now.  On this porch behind us sits a lady who knew Lee well.  Many’s the talk she had with him after the war.  My mother, a bride then, sat in the pew behind Davis that Sunday he got the message which meant that the war was over.  History!  Why this old town drips with it.  Do you think we should forget our heroes, Mr. Queed?  Up there in Massachusetts, if you have a place where John Samuel Quincy Adams once stopped for a cup of tea, you fence it off, put a brass plate on the front door, and charge a nickel to go in.  Which will history say is the greater man, Sam Adams or Robert F. Lee?  If these were Washington’s armies going by, you would probably feel a little excited, though you have had a hundred and twenty years to get used to Yorktown and the Philadelphia Congress.  Well, Washington is no more to the nation than Lee is to the South.

“But don’t let anybody get concerned about our patriotism.  We’re better Americans, not worse, because of days like these, the reason being, as I say, that we are better men.  And if your old Uncle Sammy gets into trouble some day, never fear but we’ll be on hand to pull him out, with the best troops that ever stepped, and another Lee to lead them.”