And the Voice said—"Take up your life again,
Quit yourself manfully, stand in your lot;
Let the Fever, the Famine, the peril, the pain,
Be all forgot."
That I might aid my husband to mend our fortunes, I persuaded seven of my neighbors' children to take music lessons from me. I had been carefully instructed in music, having been taught by a pupil of Liszt's, brought over by the Hon. William C. Rives at the close of his second term as Minister to the Court of Louis Philippe, to teach his own daughter Amélie. So I was well equipped for my new duties, upon which, despite my own persistent chills and fevers, I entered with enthusiasm.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FIRST "DECORATION DAY"
It was in May of this year 1866 that we inaugurated, in Petersburg, the custom, now universal, of decorating the graves of those who fell in the Civil War. Our intention was simply to lay a token of our gratitude and affection upon the graves of the brave citizens who fell June 9, 1864, in defence of Petersburg, and upon the graves of her sons who perished in the assault upon Fort Steadman. These were buried in the cemetery of the old Blandford Church, then a roofless, ivy-clad ruin. The church is one of the historic structures of the South, and it has a literature of its own among Virginians. One of the most striking of the poems concerning it was the following, found written with a pencil on the inner walls of the church many years ago. The author is unknown, but Tyrone Power, the Irish comedian, is generally supposed to have been the writer:—
"Thou art crumbling to the dust, old pile!
Thou art hastening to thy fall;
And 'round thee in thy loneliness