Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/76



town. It had a belfry tower, detached from the main structure, and keeping watch over a graveyard full of tombstones, remarkable to the observation of the boys and girls, who were drawn to it by the irresistible charm of the popular belief that it was haunted, and by the quantity of cherubim that seemed to be continually crying about the death's-head and cross-bones at the doleful and comical epitaphs below them—images long since vanished, without a trace left, devoured by the voracious genius of brick and mortar.

" I have a long score of pleasant recollections of the friendships, the popular renowns, the household charms, the bonhomie, the free confidences and the personal accomplishments of the day In the train of these goodly groups come the gallants who upheld the chivalry of the age, cavaliers of the old school, full of starch and powder: most of them the iron gentlemen of the Revolution, with leather faces—old campaigners, renowned for long stories: not long enough absent from the camp to lose their military brusquerie and dare-devil swagger; proper roystering blades, who had not long ago got out of harness and begun to affect the elegancies of civil life. Who but they! jolly fellows, fiery and loud, with stern glance of the eye and brisk turn of the head, and swash-buckler strut of defiance, like game-cocks, all in three-cornered cocked hats and powdered hair and cues, and light-colored coats with narrow capes and marvellous long backs, with the pockets on each hip, and small-*clothes that hardly reached the knee, with striped stockings, with great buckles in their shoes, and their long steel watch-chains that hung conceitedly half-way to the knee, with seals in the shape of a sounding-board to a