POINT SHOOTING. 381 



the people gather on Sunday, for they are most of them 

 regular attendants at church, this being the only form 

 of entertainment and diversion which they have. 



In the corner of some lot along the road, near each 

 farm that one passes, may be noticed tiny shingled pent 

 roofs, 6 or 8 feet long and half as broad, standing a foot 

 above the ground and supported at each corner by a 

 post. For several years, as I passed through the coun- 

 try, I speculated as to v^hat these might be. 



These roofs are shelters built over the graves of the 

 dead, and there is surely a deep pathos in this custom of 

 protecting from beating rain and drifting snow the last 

 resting places of the forms of those whom we love so 

 well. Many a mourning mother in her comfortable 

 home, her heart rent with the anguish of recent be- 

 reavement, has suffered an added pang, as the storm 

 beat upon the house, at the thought that the dear form 

 which she has so often held in her arms lies in a grave 

 out of doors exposed to all the fury of the tempest. It 

 is a sweet thought in these simple North Carolinians to 

 erect these shelters over the dear ones who have left 

 them. 



Some of these roofs are new, some are now gray and 

 weathered, and others have still fallen to decay and lie 

 in little heaps upon the ground. The generation by 

 which they were erected has passed away. There are 

 left now no loving hands to tend these old-time graves. 

 Even the names of the dead are only vague memories 

 or have been forgotten. 



The dwellers on these little farms make fair livings 



