CHAPTER XLIX.MOUNT VERNON—MEMORIAL DAY—ARLINGTON.

The Tomb of Washington—The Pilgrims Who Visit it—Where George and Martha Washington Rest—The American Mecca—The Thought of Other Graves—The Defenders of the Republic—Eating Boiled Eggs—A Butterfly Visit—The Old Mansion-House—Patriarchal Dogs—Remembering a Feast—The Room in which Washington Died—The Great Key of the Bastile—The Gift of Lafayette—The Harpsichord of Eleanor Custis—TheBelleof Mount Vernon—Moralizing—Inside the Mansion—Uncle Tom’sBouquets—Beautiful Scenery—Memorial Day at Arlington—The Soldiers’ Orphans—The Grave of Forty Soldiers—The Sacrifice of a Widow’s Son—The Children’s Offering—The Record of the Brave—A National Prayer for the Dead.

We have newer and dearer shrines, even, than the tomb of Washington; yet, in these soft, summer mornings, many pilgrims turn their faces toward Mount Vernon.

Every morning a large company, including the young and the old, the refined and the vulgar, land at the little wharf below the home of Washington. Fathers and mothers come with their children and their lunch-baskets. Pretty girls come with venerable duennas, and young men come to look at them in spite of their keepers. Lovers come and go, maundering along the lanes, as lovers will. Relic-hunters come to break off twigs and pilfer pansies; newspaper people come, agog for an item; and, for the climax, we will believe that a few come solely to do reverence at the tomb of the Father of their country.

Passing up a wooded lane that winds over the hill, we reached the famed sarcophagus, which engravings have made familiar to many eyes that have never beheld it. Here, on their marble couch, amid the grassy slopes and tutelary trees of their ancient domain, rest the bodies of George and Martha Washington. Full of years and full of honors they laid down, and their tomb has been the Mecca of this continent. It never can be other than it is. Who would rob it of one hallowed memory? Yet, as I looked at its sculptured marble, I thought of many and many a nameless grave that I had seen by the roadside, and on the scathed fields of Virginia, parched by summer’s sun, covered by winter’s snow, unturfed, uncared-for—the grave of the volunteer. Dear to me as this sepulchre of the great, is the grave of the lowliest soldier who perished for his country.

The nation will reverence always the grave of Washington. But to this generation, and to the generations which shall come after, are committed many graves which cannot be held less dear. Let every city and every village in the land gather, as most precious jewels, the names of its dead who died for liberty. Set them in enduring marble; blazon them in the public places; let them greet the traveller on silent hill-tops, and in the peaceful vales; the names of our heroes, that we, our children, our children’s children, to remotest time, may never forget the defenders of the republic, what they suffered and what they gained.

We ate boiled eggs and other good things within sight of the tomb of the Father of our Country—a very necessary proceeding before essaying to climb the hill. While we were eating, a bright blue butterfly came and paidus a visit. It looked just as if one of the myrtles had danced up from the bank before us, and was palpitating in the sunshiny air. Miss Butterfly was the loveliest “blue” I ever saw.

VIEW OF “THE CITY OF THE SLAIN.”—ARLINGTON.The remains of over 8,000 soldiers, killed during the war, lie buried in this Cemetery;—the name, regiment, and date of death of each is painted on a wooden head-board.

From the tomb to the old mansion house is a pleasant walk over upland lawns and under sheltering trees. A few patriarchal dogs came forth to meet us, and that was all the welcome we received. Their tails were very limp, their ears very droopy, their legs very shaky, but they did their best to seem glad to see us, and that was more than anybody else did. One emaciated quadruped, I am sure, will remember to his dying hour the luncheon of beef and eggs of which he partook so peacefully yesterday, under an old tree within sight of Washington’s dining-room.

I am thankful that Congress appropriated thousands of dollars to repair the Mount Vernon mansion. A mansion in its day, its rooms can bear no comparison with those of modern houses which make no pretensions. The dining-hall is the only one that can claim anything like stateliness or elegance of proportion. The parlors are the merest boxes, each containing one high window. The chamber in which Washington died commands an exquisite view, through the vistas of the grounds, down the Potomac. But, oh! what a cell, compared with the spacious apartments inhabited by the great generals of our own day. Mrs. Washington never occupied this room after the death of her husband. It was closed, and all in it kept sacred to his memory. She removed to the chamber above, and occupied it till her death. We went up. It is a mere garret. One little attic-window gives a meagre glimpse of the lovely landscape below. But inits best estate the room must have been very contracted, dreary, and without a convenience. No modern “Bridget” would be content to occupy for a week such a room as this in which Martha Washington lived and died.

The home of Washington, now the home of the nation, at last is open, kindly and genial. Here, in the hall, in its glass case, hangs the great key of the Bastile, presented to Washington by Lafayette, at the destruction of that prison in 1789.

Here what an opportunity to stand and gaze and moralize over the history of the brave men and beautiful women whose faces it shut into darkness! So thick gather the celebrated names, I must not mention one.

Here, in the grand dining-room, stands the quaint old harpsichord which General Washington presented as a wedding gift to his adopted daughter, the beautiful Eleanor Custis. It was made in Cheapside, Haymarket, London, and old ocean tossed it over to delight the heart of thebelleof Mount Vernon. Here what another fine opportunity to “reflect” over the broken and rusty keys that once thrilled to the touch of beauty, and stirred with melody in the presence of the great, and made the old halls ring with the music of festivals! Only my reflections, like many other people’s, have all come to me afterward, sitting here in my chair, thinking of that old harpsichord. When I looked at it, I doubt if I had a reflection at all. Staring at relics in the midst of a jostling crowd is not particularly conducive to reflection—at least not to emotion. Even the bedstead on which Washington died seems to lose half its sacredness being handled and commented on by a careless crowd.

In the dining-room, we see the famous marble mantel,carved in Italy, and presented to General Washington by Samuel Vaugh. Its proportions are not grand, but its carving is exquisite, and it still retains its whiteness and polish.

The dining-room is a noble apartment of lofty proportions, extending through the depth of the house, its windows on front, back and sides overlooking the loveliest portion of the grounds. It is a sunshiny room, fit for family cheer. And (reflection third) what illustrious men and famous women have broken bread and tasted wine within its carved and mouldy walls in the days that are no more!

The east and west parlors, leading from the dining-room, are meagre, high-windowed rooms. Indeed, the whole house of the Father of his Country, though, doubtless, a princely mansion in its day, reminds a denizen of the present generation of the growth of architecture, and of modern convenience and elegance, quite as much as of anything else. Out on the veranda, where a venerable Uncle Tom drives a thrifty trade in thebouquetline, we find the real beauty of Mount Vernon—its prospect. Here, looking out upon terraced lawns and forest trees, and down the gentlest of slopes to the wide Potomac, flecked with milky sails, steamboats plying its waves, and pleasure-barques drifting and dozing with the spring-time gales, we see one of the softest and fairest of landscapes. A gentle sky, the blue air goldened with daffodils and fragrant with hyacinths, pleasant friends by my side. Thus I think of Mount Vernon.

Last Saturday was Memorial Day. With banners and bands, music and speech under the softest of May skies, and in its serenest airs tens of thousands of our soldiers’graves were decorated with flowers. Most lovely was Arlington that day! No words could have been more eloquently fitting than those which were spoken; no music tenderer, nor fuller of precious memories, nor sweeter with suggestions of Heaven, than that sung under those patriarchal trees by fifty orphan children. And no sight could have been more touching than when these soldiers’ orphans laid their flower-wreaths down upon ten thousand soldiers’ graves. Yet the magnetism of the multitude was there. The tide followed the banners and the bands, the blooming maidens, the eloquent speech.

Miles out Seventh street, beyond Fort Stevens, there is a little cemetery where forty soldiers lie alone, who fell in defence of Washington. One of these was a poor widow’s son. She had three; and this was the last that she gave to her country. She, a poor widow, living far in northern Vermont, has never even seen the graves of her three soldier sons, whom she gave up, one by one, as they came to man’s estate; and who went forth from her love to return to it living no more.

To this little grave-yard on Seventh street one woman went alone with her children, carrying forty wreaths of May’s loveliest flowers, and laid one on every grave. Forty mother’s sons slept under the green turf; and one mother, in her large love, remembered and consecrated them all. She chose these because, with more than thirty thousand others in the larger cemeteries to be decorated, she feared the forty, in their isolation, might be forgotten. No others followed her; and this mother, alone with her children, scattering flowers in the silence of love upon those unremembered graves, some way wears a halo which does not shine about the multitude.

THE TOMB OF “THE UNKNOWN.”—ARLINGTON.Erected by the Government to the memory of Unknown Soldiers killed during the War.

We look on Arlington through softest airs. How beautiful it is! how sad it is! how holy! Again the tender spring grasses have crept over its sixteen thousand graves. The innocents, the violets of the woods, are blooming over the heads of our brave. In the rear of the house a granite obelisk has been raised to the two thousand who sleep in one grave. Four cannon point from its summit, and on its face it bears this inscription:—

“Beneath this stone repose the bones of two thousand one hundred and eleven unknown soldiers, gathered after the war from the fields of Bull Run, and the route to the Rappahannock. Their bodies could not be identified, but their names and deaths are recorded in the archives of their country, and its grateful citizens honor them as their noble army of martyrs. May they rest in peace.”

The rooms and conservatories of the house are filled with luxurious plants, soon to be set out on the graves of this cemetery. Beauty and silence reign through this domain of the dead. There is a hush in the air, and a hush in the heart, as you walk through it, reading its names, pausing by the graves of its “unknown,” thinking of the past. Far as the sight reaches, stretch the long columns of immortal dead. The beauty of their sleeping-place, the reverent care covering it everywhere, tells how dear to the Nation’s heart is the dust of its heroes, how sacred the spot where they lie. In this let us not forget the still higher love which we owe them; let us attest it by a deeper devotion to the principles for which they died.

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