NATURE'S MEMORIAL DAY 191 



marked. It may be for the people of an elder 

 race all other traces of whom are lost that the 

 tiny, lovely flowers group their white and green, 

 or for the humbler creatures of the wood who 

 would otherwise lack tokens of mourning, but the 

 smilacina certainly decorates the mounds in all 

 woodlands with mystic tracings which have their 

 own meaning. But it does more than this. In 

 modest beauty it slips shyly out from the shelter- 

 ing friendliness of the pines and stands with 

 bowed head on many a dewy Memorial Day morn- 

 ing by such mounds as it may reach, in all gentle 

 friendliness. 



Shyer yet are the saxifrages which sometimes 

 stand near by. These I have seen, clad as if in 

 Confederate gray, by a mound which veterans had 

 marked with a Union flag and along which tiny 

 blue violets nestled lovingly. So, surely, they 

 stand in mute respect and nestle as lovingly by 

 many another spot where the remembered one 

 fought as bravely beneath another flag. Long 

 ago the good brown earth taught the blue and the 

 gray to thus fraternize, and though we forgot it 

 for a time the lesson came soon back to us with 



