Chapter 4

James Monroe, born in Westmoreland County, 28th of April, 1758; died in the city of New York 4th of July, 1831. By order of the General Assembly his remains were removed to this cemetery 5th of July, 1858. As an evidence of the affection of Virginia for her good and honored son.

The ends and sides of the vault are formed by ornamental cast iron grating joining the supporting pillars, and so closely made as to render it difficult to see through the interstices.

Andrew Jackson is buried in the garden of his home, the Hermitage, eleven miles from Nashville, Tennessee. The grave is about two hundred feet from the house. A circular space of earth, eighteen feet across and elevated about two feet, is crowned by a massive monument of Tennessee limestone marking the spot where Jackson and his wife lie. The base covers the graves, and from it rise eight fluted columns supporting a plain entablature surmounted by an urn. The ceiling and cornices thus formed are ornamented with white stucco work.

From a base on this encolumned platform rises a pyramid. On the left, over the body of the President, is a stone bearing the inscription:

GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON.

Born March 15, 1767;

Died June 8, 1845.

On the right of the pyramid is another stone recording his undying esteem for his wife.

Martin Van Buren died at Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York, and is buried in the graveyard at the northern end of that village.

The grave is crowded by other graves, and is neglected, unfenced, and flowerless. Over it is a plain granite monument, about fifteen feet high, with an inscription which reads:

MARTIN VAN BUREN,

Eighth President of the United States.

Born December 5, 1782;

Died July 24, 1862.

Beneath this inscription is another one which reads: "Hannah Van Buren, his wife; born March 3, 1783; died at Albany, New York, February 3, 1819."

William Henry Harrison's grave is marked by no monument and bears no inscription. It is situated fifteen miles west of Cincinnati at North Bend. A brick vault on the summit of a small hill holds the remains of Harrison and his wife and children. He died one month after his inauguration and received funeral honors all over the country, but his grave is now singularly neglected and apparently forgotten.

John Tyler, the tenth President, rests in an obscurity similar to that of his immediate predecessor, Harrison. At Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia, ten yards from the unique monument which marks the grave of President Monroe, are interred Tyler's remains. No monument--save a small magnolia-tree--no inscription, no tablet; nothing but weeds and shrubs and loneliness mark the last resting-place of the President whose sad fate it was to be the nation's executive at a time when his political and temperamental tendencies were the least of all adjustable to the great office he held.

James K. Polk's remains repose at Nashville, Tennessee, almost within sight of The Hermitage, the last resting-place of President Jackson. A limestone monument marks the grave, designed by William Strickland, the architect of the Capitol. It is in Grecian Doric style (a roof supported by columns), about twelve feet square and the same height. An inscription on the architrave of the eastern front reads:

JAMES KNOX POLK, Eleventh President of the United States. Born November 2, 1795; Died June 15, 1849.

Further inscriptions inform the reader that "the mortal remains of James K. Polk are resting in the vault beneath." They eulogize his virtues and detail his public services at great length.

Zachary Taylor is buried in the old burial-ground on the ancestral farm of the Taylors, five miles from Louisville, Kentucky. The plot is about one hundred yards from the mansion and contains the bodies of three generations of the family.

A few years after Taylor's death Congress made an appropriation for the purpose of constructing a vault, and within a few years the State of Kentucky appropriated five thousand dollars to erect a monument. The sarcophagi containing the bodies of the President and his wife are separated by a marble bust of Taylor.

The monument is a gray granite shaft, surmounted by a colossal Italian marble statue, representing General Taylor in full military dress, with sword and cap in hand. The monument is inscribed with the general's name, dates of birth and death on one side, and on the opposite side are the United States coat-of-arms and implements of war in bas-relief. On the other two sides are the names of the great battles of the Mexican War.

Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President, was the second Vice-President to be called to the higher office. His grave is at Forest Lawn Cemetery, three miles from Buffalo, New York. The monument is of highly polished Scotch granite, twenty-two feet high. On the base, in raised letters, is the word "Fillmore," and farther up is the inscription which proclaims his name and the dates of birth and death.

Franklin Pierce is buried in the Minot Lot, Old Cemetery, Concord, New Hampshire. The monument over his grave is of elaborately carved Italian marble. The base is of granite, and on the plinth in raised letters is the word "Pierce." A panel is inscribed:

FRANCIS PIERCE. Born November 23, 1804; Died October 8, 1869.

Presumably Francis is the name under which he was baptized. Near the President's grave is that of Mrs. Pierce--a plain white marble spire with an upward pointing hand, marking the spot.

James Buchanan, the fifteenth President, reposes in Woodward Hill Cemetery, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Buchanan plot is thirty feet by twelve, and is surrounded by an iron fence interwoven with rose-bushes, and roses are profusely dotted all over the well-kept lawn. The President's remains are in a vault covered with slabs of rock in the center of the plot. On these is a base of granite which is surmounted by a block of Italian marble, six feet four inches long, by two feet ten inches wide, and three feet six inches high. It is worked with a molded cap and base, and bears the inscription:

Here Rest the Remains of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States, Born in Franklin County, Pa., April 23, 1791, Died at Wheatland, June 1, 1868.

Abraham Lincoln's tomb is in the National Lincoln monument, Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois. The base on which the column stands is seventy-two feet six inches square, with projections at the front and rear for the catacomb and memorial hall, making a total length of one hundred and nineteen feet six inches. The height of the base is fifteen feet, and round the top of it runs a strong railing.

The obelisk stands on a beautiful pedestal with four bronze statues at the corners, and is eighty-two feet six inches high from the base. In front of this, on a separate pedestal, is a statue of Lincoln. In his right hand he is holding an open scroll representing the Proclamation of Emancipation.

The top of the base and the platform round the pedestal are reached by two flights of stairs, each of which has twenty-four steps. The tomb is a vault in the catacomb in the front projection of the base. Under the statue of the President is the single word:

LINCOLN.

Andrew Johnson's grave is on a beautiful cone-shaped eminence, a little way from Greenville, Tennessee. On each side of the tomb are piers from which springs a granite arch of thirteen stones--presumably typifying the thirteen original States. Above the arch rises a column, on the marble plinth of which are inscribed the words:

Andrew Johnson, Seventeenth President, U.S.A., Born December 29, 1808, Died July 31, 1875. "His faith in the people never wavered."

Below is Mrs. Johnson's name with the dates of birth and death, and the words, "In Memory of Father and Mother." It was erected by the surviving children.

Ulysses S. Grant's tomb is the finest mausoleum in America, and for beauty and majesty of situation one of the finest in the world. It stands on an eminence in Riverside Park, New York City, on the banks of the Hudson, directly overlooking the noble river. It is about one hundred feet square and one hundred and sixty feet high.

The building is in the Ionic style, strong and massive without a suggestion of severity, the surrounding pillars and the dome adding grace to its strength. Over the entrance are inscribed Grant's own words:

"Let Us Have Peace."

The inside is of Italian marble and Massachusetts granite highly polished, with the ceiling and rotunda formed of exquisitely wrought white stucco work. It contains two sarcophagi, holding the bodies of President and Mrs. Grant. These are placed in a well-shaped crypt, thirty feet deep, entered from two staircases, each of twenty marble steps. They are hewn from one solid piece of red Massachusetts granite, and weigh ten tons each. Two anterooms serve as repositories of Grant relics, which include a matchless piece of Japanese embroidery presented to Mrs. Grant by the Japanese government.

Rutherford B. Hayes rests in unostentatious simplicity in Oakwood Cemetery, Fremont, Ohio; James A. Garfield in a bronze sarcophagus in the magnificent monument erected by the nation at Lake View Cemetery, on the shore of Lake Erie; Chester A. Arthur beneath a monument representing an angel, and with a palm-leaf on his sarcophagus, at Rural Cemetery, Albany; Benjamin Harrison at Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis; and McKinley in Canton Cemetery, Canton, Ohio, not yet honored by a national memorial, but probably soon to be so.

MILITARY RED TAPE IN INDIA.

Mix-Up in Which the Senior Cat, the Junior Cat, and Rations Were Involved Had to be Adjusted by the War Office.

The precision of organization and discipline that is the very foundation of military life is always a matter of wonder and admiration to the civilian. He may express impatience with army "red tape," yet he has a lurking regard for this very thing which he condemns, because he knows, vaguely, that it has a reason for being and that it is good for men generally to be compelled to respect a silent force as powerful and dignified as this is.

Red tape is a serious matter, not to be lightly treated by any one, soldier or civilian, but the observance of its "code" to the very letter probably never was more complete than in the case of a native officer in India.

* * * * *

This babu, who was in charge of the documents of a certain town, found that they were being seriously damaged by rats. He wrote a letter to the government, informing it of the danger to his records, and respectfully urging it to provide him with weekly rations for two cats to destroy the marauding rats.

The request was granted, and the two cats were installed--one, the larger of the two, receiving slightly better rations than the other.

All went well for a few weeks, when the supreme government of India received the following despatch:

"I have the honor to inform you that the senior cat is absent without leave. What shall I do?"

The problem seemed to baffle the supreme government, for the babu received no answer.

After waiting a few days he sent off a proposal:

"In re Absentee Cat. I propose to promote the junior cat, and in the meantime to take into government service a probationer cat on full rations."

The supreme government expressed its approval of the scheme, and things once more ran smoothly and without friction in that department.

A Fight With a Cannon.

By VICTOR HUGO.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is most highly regarded in France as a poet and dramatist, while in foreign countries his novels are best known and hold the highest place.

Hugo was the son of a soldier of the First Republic and of a lady who was a royalist of the most enthusiastic type. The son, therefore, showed a blend of the two traditions whose clash has made France what it is to-day. His most striking quality was his wealth of imagination. His creations were always imaginative--sometimes superbly so and sometimes grotesquely so--but his thoughts and imagery were always vast and gigantic, even when monstrous.

Hugo's second trait was his egotism, which prevented him from having the saving grace of humor. He thought himself to be almost more than mortal, and he lived in an atmosphere of hero-worship. When the Emperor of Brazil visited Paris and expressed a wish to meet him, Hugo disdainfully remarked:

"I have no time to waste on emperors."

When the Germans were besieging Paris, Hugo seriously proposed that the war be settled by a single combat between himself and the newly crowned Kaiser of Germany. He wrote to the emperor:

"You are a great monarch; I am a great poet. We are therefore equals."

His notion of himself was summed up in a single epigram: "France is the world. Paris is France. Victor Hugo is Paris."

Amiel called him "half genius and half charlatan."

Hugo's novels read like prose epics--overwhelming and at times almost convulsive in their effort to give expression to his tremendous imaginings. One of the most striking of them is "Ninety-Three," from which the accompanying passage is taken. The book is a great drama of the breaking out of the French Revolution, a time when every passion was at its height and was exhibited with utter unrestraint.

With such a theme Hugo was perfectly at home. He flames and thunders. He flings before the reader actions in which the Titanic energy of the writer is felt in every line, and he revels in the conflict of the two great forces of repression and revolt which made that period memorable. In the passage quoted here many of the author's conspicuous qualities are seen. The translation is that contained in the "International Library of Famous Literature," and is reprinted by the courtesy of the Avil Publishing Company, of Philadelphia.

La Vieuville's words were suddenly cut short by a desperate cry, and at the same instant they heard a noise as unaccountable as it was awful. The cry and this noise came from the interior of the vessel.

The captain and lieutenant made a rush for the gun-deck, but could not get down. All the gunners were hurrying frantically up.

A frightful thing had just happened.

One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four-pounder, had got loose.

This is perhaps the most formidable of ocean accidents. Nothing more terrible can happen to a vessel in open sea and under full sail.

A gun that breaks its moorings becomes suddenly some indescribable super-natural beast. It is a machine which transforms itself into a monster. This mass turns upon its wheels, has the rapid movements of a billiard-ball; rolls with the rolling, pitches with the pitching; goes, comes, pauses, seems to meditate; resumes its course, rushes along the ship from end to end like an arrow, circles about, springs aside, evades, rears, breaks, kills, exterminates. It is a battering-ram which assaults a wall at its own caprice. Moreover, the battering-ram is metal, the wall wood. It is the entrance of matter into liberty.

One might say that this eternal slave avenges itself. It seems as if the power of evil hidden in what we call inanimate objects finds a vent and bursts suddenly out. It has an air of having lost patience, of seeking some fierce, obscure retribution; nothing more inexorable than this rage of the inanimate.

The mad mass has the bounds of a panther, the weight of the elephant, the agility of the mouse, the obstinacy of the ox, the unexpectedness of the surge, the rapidity of lightning, the deafness of the tomb. It weighs ten thousand pounds, and it rebounds like a child's ball. Its flight is a wild whirl abruptly cut at right angles. What is to be done? How to end this?

A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes, a wind falls, a broken mast is replaced, a leak is stopped, a fire dies out; but how to control this enormous brute of bronze? In what way can one attack it?

You can make a mastiff hear reason, astound a bull, fascinate a boa, frighten a tiger, soften a lion; but there is no resource with that monster--a cannon let loose. You cannot kill it--for it is dead; while at the same time it lives. It lives with a sinister life bestowed on it by Infinity.

The planks beneath it give it play. It is moved by the ship, which is moved by the sea, which is moved by the wind. This destroyer is a plaything. The ship, the waves, the blasts, all aid it; hence its frightful vitality. How to assail this fury of complication? How to fetter this monstrous mechanism for wrecking a ship? How foresee its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of these blows upon the sides may stave out the vessel. How divine its awful gyrations! One has to deal with a projectile which thinks, seems to possess ideas, and which changes its direction at each instant. How stop the course of something which must be avoided?

The horrible cannon flings itself about, advances, recoils, strikes to the right, strikes to the left, flees, passes, disconcerts ambushes, breaks down obstacles, crushes men like flies. The great danger of the situation is in the mobility of its base. How combat an inclined plane which has blind caprices? The ship, so to speak, has lightning imprisoned in its womb which seeks to escape; it is like thunder rolling above an earthquake.

In an instant the whole crew were on foot. The fault was the chief gunner's; he had neglected to fix home the screw-nut of the mooring-chain, and had so badly shackled the four wheels of the carronade that the play given to the sole and frame had separated the platform, and ended by breaking the breeching. The cordage had broken, so that the gun was no longer secure on the carriage. The stationary breeching which prevents recoil was not in use at that period. As a heavy wave struck the port-hole the carronade, weakly attached, recoiled, burst its chain, and began to rush wildly about.

Conceive, in order to have an idea of this strange sliding, the movements of a drop of water running down a pane of glass.

At the moment when the lashings gave way the gunners were in the battery, some in groups, others standing alone, occupied with such duties as sailors perform in expectation of the command to clear for action. The carronade, hurled forward by the pitching, dashed into this knot of men, and crushed four at the first blow; then, flung back and shot out anew by the rolling, it cut in two a fifth poor fellow, glanced off to the larboard side, and struck a piece of the battery with such force as to unship it.

Then rose the cry of distress which had been heard. The men rushed toward the ladder; the gun-deck emptied in the twinkling of an eye. The enormous cannon was left alone. She was given up to herself. She was her own mistress, and mistress of the vessel. She could do what she willed with both. The whole crew of the corvette, men accustomed to laugh in battle, trembled now. To describe the universal terror would be impossible.

Captain Boisberthelot and Lieutenant Vieuville, although both intrepid men, stopped at the head of the stairs, and remained mute, pale, hesitating, looking down on the deck. Some one pushed them aside with his elbow and descended.

It was their passenger, the peasant--the man of whom they had been speaking a moment before.

When he reached the foot of the ladder, he stood still.

The cannon came and went along the deck. One might have fancied it the living chariot of the Apocalypse. The marine lantern, oscillating from the ceiling, added a confusing whirl of lights and shadows to the strange vision. The shape of the cannon was undistinguishable from the rapidity of its course; now it looked black in the light, now it cast weird reflections through the gloom.

It kept on its work of destruction. It had already shattered four other pieces, and dug two crevices in the side, fortunately above the water-line, though they would leak in case a squall should come on. It dashed itself frantically against the framework; the solid tiebeams resisted, their curved form giving them great strength, but they creaked ominously under the assaults of this terrible club, which seemed endowed with a sort of appalling ubiquity, striking on every side at once. The strokes of a bullet shaken in a bottle would not be madder or more rapid.

The four wheels passed and repassed above the dead men, cut, carved, slashed them, till the five corpses were a score of stumps rolling about the deck; the heads seem to cry out, streams of blood twisted in and out of the planks with every pitch of the vessel. The ceiling, damaged in several places, began to gape. The whole ship was filled with the awful tumult.

The captain promptly recovered his composure, and at his order the sailors threw down into the deck everything which could deaden and check the mad rush of the gun--mattresses, hammocks, spare sails, coils of rope, extra equipments, and the bales of forged French currency of which the corvette carried a whole cargo--an infamous deception which the English considered a fair trick in war.

But what could these rags avail? No one dared descend to arrange them in any useful fashion, and in a few instants they were mere heaps of lint.

There was just sea enough to render the accident as complete as possible. A tempest would have been desirable--it might have thrown the gun upside down; and the four wheels once in the air, the monster could have been mastered. But the devastation continued and increased. There were gashes and even fractures in the masts, which, embedded in the woodwork of the keel, pierce through the decks of ships like great round pillars.

The mizzenmast was cracked, and the mainmast itself was injured under the convulsive blows of the gun. The battery was being destroyed. Ten pieces out of the thirty were disabled; the breaches multiplied in the side, and the corvette began to take in water.

The old passenger, who had descended to the gun-deck, looked like a form of stone stationed at the foot of the stairs. He stood motionless, gazing sternly about upon the devastation. Indeed, it seemed impossible to take a single step forward.

Each bound of the liberated carronade menaced the destruction of the vessel. A few minutes more and shipwreck would be inevitable.

They must perish or put a summary end to the disaster. A decision must be made--but how?

What a combatant--this cannon!

They must check this mad monster. They must seize this flash of lightning. They must overthrow this thunderbolt.

Boisberthelot said to La Vieuville:

"Do you believe in God, chevalier?"

La Vieuville replied:

"Yes. No. Sometimes."

"In a tempest?"

"Yes; and in moments like this."

"Only God can aid us here," said Boisberthelot.

All were silent; the cannon kept up its horrible fracas.

The waves beat against the ship; their blows from without responded to the strokes of the cannon.

It was like two hammers alternating.

Suddenly, into the midst of this sort of inaccessible circus, where the escaped cannon leaped and bounded, there sprang a man with an iron bar in his hand. It was the author of this catastrophe--the gunner whose culpable negligence had caused the accident; the captain of the gun. Having been the means of bringing about the misfortune, he desired to repair it. He had caught up a handspike in one fist, a tiller rope with a slipping noose in the other, and thus equipped had jumped down into the gun-deck.

Then a strange combat began, a Titanic strife--the struggle of the gun against the gunner; a battle between matter and intelligence; a duel between the inanimate and the human.

The man was posted in an angle, the bar and rope in his two fists; backed against one of the riders, settled firmly on his legs as on two pillars of steel, livid, calm, tragic, rooted as it were in the planks, he waited.

He waited for the cannon to pass near him.