stance. The little group gathers about
the flagpole, waiting.

Slowly up the roadway comes a procession headed by the
band playing the sweetly solemn funeral march. Behind 20
it is carried a plain wooden box, draped with the Stars and
Stripes, while a firing squad marches in the rear. They stop
at a newly dug grave and gently lower the coffin. In clear,
concise tones the chaplain reads the funeral service. A mist
seems to creep up from the valley and wisps of it wind themselves
through the air. In the neighboring field the sheep
who have been grazing huddle together and gaze, as only
sheep can, at the performance going on near them. Like
the sheep, the soldiers in the cemetery gather closer to each 5
other, each one's eyes filled with tears, and each one conscious
of a queer sensation going on within him. . . .

Now the chaplain has finished, the members of the firing
squad take their places. A dead silence ensues, broken by
the shots of their rifles. Two more salvos are fired and the 10
ceremony is finished. Finally, when the mist has become
very dense, the clear notes of the bugle ring out, blowing
taps for a soldier's last farewell sleep.

You will never really appreciate the beauty and pathos
of the notes of taps unless you have heard them while lying 15
on your hard bunk some night at the end of a hard day.
The music seems to say that some day things will be peaceful
again, all these hardships will be merely incidents to
laugh over in the happy days to come. And so, singing its
farewell to you, the notes die away, leaving you to slip into 20
the balm of sleep.

The grave has now been covered and the procession and
workers gone. The fields and valley seem forsaken and
alone in the late afternoon. But no, there by the graves,
flitting through the rain in their capes and hoods, and looking 25
like so many little sparrows, are some little French girls,
daughters of the near-by peasants. Tenderly their little
hands decorate the newest grave with flowers, their tribute
to one who risked all for the safety of little maidens. Thus
the grave is left, heaped with green branches and flowers, a 30
pretty resting place.

--_The Springfield Republican._

_OUR COUNTRY_

_Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her fee