Book Description

Excerpt from Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches The long years come and go, And the Past, The sorrowful, splendid Past, With its glory and its woe, Seems never to have been. - Seems never to have been? O somber days and grand, How ye crowd back once more, Seeing our heroes' graves are green By the Potomac and the Cumberland, And in the valley of the Shenandoah! When we remember how they died, - In dark ravine and on the mountain-side, In leaguered fort and fire-encircled town, And where the iron ships went down, - How their dear lives were spent In the weary hospital-tent, In the cockpit's crowded hive, - it seems Ignoble to be alive! Thomas Bailey Aldrich. "Keeper of what? Keeper of the dead. Well, it is easier to keep the dead than the living; and as for the gloom of the thing, the living among whom I have been lately were not a hilarious set." John Rodman sat in the doorway and looked out over his domain. The little cottage behind him was empty of life save himself alone. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.