"He may not have helped to win any victories. He may have been a coward. How should we know? Epitaphs often lie. The dust is peopled with soldiers." And again they moved on.
"Does any one read his sermons now, know you?" asked the old man as they paused before a third monument.
"Read his sermons!" they exclaimed, laughing more heartily. "Are sermons so much read in the country you come from? See how long he has been dead! What should the world be thinking of, to be reading his musty sermons?"
"At least does it give you no pleasure to read 'He was a good man'?" inquired he plaintively.
"Ay; but if he was good, was not his goodness its own reward?"
"He may have also wished long to be remembered for it."
"Naturally; but we have not heard that his wish was gratified."
"Is it not sad that the memory of so much beauty and truth and goodness in our common human life should perish? But, sirs,"—and here the old man spoke with sudden energy—"if there should be one who combined perfect beauty and truth and goodness in one form and character, do you not think such a rare being would escape the common fate and be long and widely remembered?"
"Doubtless."
"Sirs," said he, quickly stepping in front of them with flashing eyes, "is there in all this vast cemetery not a single monument that has kept green the memory of the being in whose honour it was erected?"