something or other and homesickness. One morning I happened upon a
name that impressed me as being familiar. After studying it a while,
I finally recognized it as the same name that had been upon the law
license that was framed in oak and hanging above the desk of the office
boy. There was printed after the name:
“Pernicious malaria and nostalgia.”
In the spring of the following year (1899) the bodies of several
hundred soldiers who had died in Cuba were brought home for final
interment. I happened to be in the capital again and heard that there
was to be a military funeral that afternoon. I had some curiosity to
see a military funeral, and so, having nothing else to do, went to the
church where it was to be held. You can imagine my surprise when I was
told that it was the funeral of the boy who had once tended the cigar
stand in the lobby of the St. James and read Reeves’ _History of the
English Law_, the boy who had afterward gone to the city to practise
law, and, later, enlisted in the First Infantry to die in Cuba. There
were not many at the funeral, for, of course, he was only a private.
There was a woman there in black, probably his aunt, or mother, for she
appeared to weep, and some girl. Out at the cemetery--Oak Wood, where
a general is buried--there were few persons besides the clergyman,
and the woman and the girl. A local militia company had sent a firing
squad, and it fired the salute prescribed for a private over the grave,
and a bugler stood at the head and blew taps, the soldier’s good night.
Happening to have a rose or two with me, I threw them into the grave.
The coffin, of course, had a flag over it, but that was about all there
was of the military funeral--hardly enough, indeed, to reward one’s
curiosity.
This, I believe, is all. The story hardly seems worth the telling,
now that it is written, but I fancied that I detected one or two
coincidences in my haphazard relations with the boy, like my reading of
his death in the paper, and my happening to be in the capital on the
day of his funeral, and so I set them down.
I forgot to say that I happened to have his law license with me that
day at the funeral. After he had enlisted in the First, perhaps I
should explain, I noticed it one day in the offices of Goodman, Peck,
Gilmore and Eckhart, where it was evidently in the way. So I let it
hang in my office all that summer and all the next winter, but in the
spring we needed the wall space for some new bookcases, and I took it
down. I think the girl who was at the funeral that day, whoever she is,
has it now.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.