d some surprise was not,
therefore, the fact that a Southern white woman should teach a colored
school; it lay in the fact that up to this time no woman of just her
quality had taken up such work. Most of the teachers of colored schools
were not of those who had constituted the aristocracy of the old regime;
they might be said rather to represent the new order of things, in which
labor was in time to become honorable, and men were, after a somewhat
longer time, to depend, for their place in society, upon themselves
rather than upon their ancestors. Mary Myrover belonged to one of the
proudest of the old families. Her ancestors had been people of
distinction in Virginia before a collateral branch of the main stock had
settled in North Carolina. Before the war, they had been able to live up
to their pedigree; but the war brought sad changes. Miss Myrover's
father--the Colonel Myrover who led a gallant but desperate charge at
Vicksburg--had fallen on the battlefield, and his tomb in the white
cemetery was a shrine for the family. On the Confederate Memorial Day,
no other grave was so profusely decorated with flowers, and, in the
oration pronounced, the name of Colonel Myrover was always used to
illustrate the highest type of patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice.
Miss Myrover's brother, too, had fallen in the conflict; but his bones
lay in some unknown trench, with those of a thousand others who had
fallen on the same field. Ay, more, her lover, who had hoped to come
home in the full tide of victory and claim his bride as a reward for
gallantry, had shared the fate of her father and brother. When the war
was over, the remnant of the family found itself involved in the common
ruin,--more deeply involved, indeed, than some others; for Colonel
Myrover had believed in the ultimate triumph of his cause, and had
invested most of his wealth in Confederate bonds, which were now only so
much waste paper.

There had been a little left. Mrs. Myrover was thrifty, and had laid by
a few hundred dollars, which she kept in the house to meet unforeseen
contingencies. There remained, too, their home, with an ample garden and
a well-stocked orchard, besides a considerable tract of country land,
partly cleared, but productive of very little revenue.

With their shrunken resources, Miss Myrover and her mother were able to
hold up their heads without embarrassment for some years after the close
of the war. But when things were adjusted to the