It was detached
from the rest of the collegiate group, and stood in a grassy triangle of
its own. As he approached it with Verena she suddenly stopped, to
decline responsibility. "Now mind, if you don't like what's inside, it
isn't my fault."
He looked at her an instant, smiling. "Is there anything against
Mississippi?"
"Well, no, I don't think she is mentioned. But there is great praise of
our young men in the war."
"It says they were brave, I suppose."
"Yes, it says so in Latin."
"Well, so they were--I know something about that," Basil Ransom said. "I
must be brave enough to face them--it isn't the first time." And they
went up the low steps and passed into the tall doors. The Memorial Hall
of Harvard consists of three main divisions: one of them a theatre, for
academic ceremonies; another a vast refectory, covered with a timbered
roof, hung about with portraits and lighted by stained windows, like the
halls of the colleges of Oxford; and the third, the most interesting, a
chamber high, dim, and severe, consecrated to the sons of the university
who fell in the long Civil War. Ransom and his companion wandered from
one part of the building to another, and stayed their steps at several
impressive points; but they lingered longest in the presence of the
white, ranged tablets, each of which, in its proud, sad clearness, is
inscribed with the name of a student-soldier. The effect of the place is
singularly noble and solemn, and it is impossible to feel it without a
lifting of the heart.
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