n's endeavor to live up to his own ideal of
his duty be a religion. The same feeling led the keeper to spend hours
in copying the rolls. "John Andrew Warren, Company G, Eighth New
Hampshire Infantry," he repeated, as he slowly wrote the name, giving
"John Andrew" clear, bold capitals and a lettering impossible to
mistake; "died August 15, 1863, aged twenty-two years. He came from the
prison-pen yonder, and lies somewhere in those trenches, I suppose. Now
then, John Andrew, don't fancy I am sorrowing for you; no doubt you are
better off than I am at this very moment. But none the less, John
Andrew, shall pen, ink, and hand do their duty to you. For that I am
here."

Infinite pains and labor went into these records of the dead; one
hair's-breadth error, and the whole page was replaced by a new one. The
same spirit kept the grass carefully away from the low coping of the
trenches, kept the graveled paths smooth and the mounds green, and the
bare little cottage neat as a man-of-war. When the keeper cooked his
dinner, the door toward the east, where the dead lay, was scrupulously
closed, nor was it opened until everything was in perfect order again.
At sunset the flag was lowered, and then it was the keeper's habit to
walk slowly up and down the path until the shadows veiled the mounds on
each side, and there was nothing save the peaceful green of earth. "So
time will efface our little lives and sorrows," he mused, "and we shall
be as nothing in the indistinguishable past." Yet none the less did he
fulfill the duties of every day and hour with exactness. "At least they
shall not say that I was lacking," he murmured to himself as he thought
vaguely of the future beyond these graves. Who "they" were, it would
have troubled him to formulate, since he was one of the many sons whom
New England in this generation sends forth with a belief composed
entirely of negatives. As the season advanced, he worked all day in the
sunshine. "My garden looks well," he said. "I like this cemetery because
it is the original resting-place of the dead who lie beneath. They were
not brought here from distant places, gathered up by contract, numbered,
and described like so much merchandise; their first repose has not been
broken, their peace has been undisturbed. Hasty burials the prison
authorities gave them; the thin bodies were tumbled into the trenches by
men almost as thin, for the whole State went hungry in those dark days.
There were not many