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Bobby and Alice and Pink had been telling Grandma about the soldiers’ monument that was to be placed in the courthouse yard.
“It is to be made of granite,” said Bobby, “and the names of all the soldiers from this county who died or were killed in the war will be cut on one side of it.”
“Well, well,” said Grandma thoughtfully, “that makes me think of a monument I knew about long ago, but this monument wasn’t made of granite.”
“Marble, may be,”suggested Alice.
“No, not marble, either. You never heard of a monument like this. But, there, I might as well tell you about it,” and Grandma polished her spectacles, found her knitting, and began:
“This monument was for a soldier, too. Andy Carson was his name. He was a very young soldier, only fifteen years old, but large for his age, and he ran away from home and enlisted. Three times he ran away and twice his father brought him back, but the third time he let him go.
“But poor Andy never wore a uniform or saw a battle. He died in camp two weeks after he had enlisted and he was buried in our cemetery, with only Father to read a chapter out of the Bible and say a prayer, because the preacher was clear at the other end of the circuit.
“Right away Mrs. Carson began to plan for a monument for Andy. At first it was to be just an ordinary monument, but the more she thought about it the grander she wanted it to be. Nothing could be too good for Andy. He should have the biggest monument in the cemetery—a life-size figure. But she couldn’t decide whether to have the figure draped in a robe with a dove perched on the shoulder or to have it wearing a uniform and cap. Mrs. Carson finally settled on the uniform, though she couldn’t give up the idea of the dove, so there was to be a dove in one outstretched hand.
“But the Carsons had no money and they didn’t like to work. If anyone mentioned work to Mr. Carson, he would begin always to talk about the misery in his back. When brother Charlie had a job he didn’t want to do, he would bend over with his hand on his back, screw up his face as if he were in great pain, and say, ‘Oh, that misery in my back!’
“Mother said Mrs. Carson had not been lazy as a girl, but that she had grown discouraged from having so many to do for and nothing to do with. Sometimes she came to visit Mother, because Mother was always nice to everybody. She was very tall and thin, with a short waist, and she wore the longest skirts I ever saw and a black slat sunbonnet.
“There was a big family of children—a girl, Maggie, older than Andy, and Willie, a boy a year younger, and four or five smaller children. The older ones came to school part of the time, but none of them ever came to church—partly because they had no proper clothes, I suppose.
“They lived on a farm left them by Mrs. Carson’s father. The land was all run down and worn out. It was covered with briars and broom sage and a stubby growth of trees. Fences were down, and the buildings were unpainted and old.
“So, though the Carsons talked a great deal about Andy’s monument, no one ever thought they would get one. But Mother said it was the first thing Mrs. Carson had really wanted for years and years and people generally got the things they wanted most if they were willing to work hard for them. And it turned out that all the Carsons were willing to work hard for Andy’s monument. It was astonishing the way they worked.
“Mrs. Carson and the children started with the house and yard. They cleaned the rubbish off the yard and raked and swept it and planted flowers. They made the stove wood into a neat pile and swept up the chips and patched the fence and whitewashed it. By this time Mr. Carson had the fever, too. He started to clear off the land, all the family helping him. All summer long they worked, early and late, cutting out the briars and underbrush, burning broom sage, building fences, and by fall you wouldn’t have known it for the same place. They worked for a number of other people, too, and made a little money, besides taking seed corn and a pair of little pigs and other things they needed in payment.
“Well, it took a lot of money for a monument like Andy’s was to be, but the Carsons worked and saved for it. It seemed as if they had set a new standard for themselves and were trying hard to live up to Andy’s monument.
“They painted the house and repaired and whitewashed the outbuildings and put a paling fence around the front yard. They got lace curtains and a store carpet for their best room, and when Father got us a piano, Mrs. Carson bought our organ for a trifle. They got new clothes and dishes and tablecloths, and every Sunday they all came to meeting and asked folks home with them to dinner just as anybody else did.
“Dave Orbison was courting Maggie, and Willie was ready to go to the academy. He wanted an education and came to our house every week to get Truman to help him with his studies or to borrow books. If it hadn’t been for the monument, people would have forgotten that the Carsons had ever been considered lazy or shiftless.
“But Mrs. Carson was always talking about the monument. She had never had Andy’s funeral sermon preached, and she planned to have it preached the Sunday after the monument was set up.
“And at the end of three years they had enough money, but for some reason they didn’t get the monument. Everybody wondered about it. Weeks went by, and still no news of the monument. Willie often came to our house, but he never mentioned it. Then one day Mrs. Carson came. She had a horse now, and she looked longer and thinner than ever in her black calico riding skirt.
“Mother was fitting a dress on me—a red wool delaine for Sundays—but Mrs. Carson dropped into a chair without even glancing at it.
“‘Mrs. Purviance,’ she began immediately, ‘I want your honest opinion about something. For over three years now we’ve been saving for Andy’s monument, and until a few weeks ago I never had a thought but that that was the right thing to do with the money. But one night I got to thinking that here was Willie wanting an education, and Maggie getting ready to be married and no money to help her set up housekeeping, and Lissy longing for music lessons, and I couldn’t sleep for thinking. And, Mrs. Purviance, I haven’t had a minute’s peace since. That’s why I haven’t ordered the monument. I can’t make up my mind to it. It’ll be a long time before we can help Willie much if we spend the monument money. It looks as if he ought to have his chance. And of course the money won’t help Andy any, but I had set my heart on a fine monument for him. I don’t know what to do,” and she started to cry.
“Mrs. Carson,” said Mother, “you have given Andy a better monument than you can ever set up in the cemetery”
“‘Mrs. Carson,’ Mother said gently, and there were tears in her eyes, too, ‘if you want to know what I really think, I’ll tell you. I think that as far as honoring Andy is concerned you and your family have already given him a much better monument than any you can ever set up in the cemetery.’
“Mother ran a pin straight into me and I jumped, and Mother said she was done with me for a while. I went out, and that was the last I heard of the monument until the Sunday Andy’s funeral sermon was to be preached.
“There had been so much talk about the monument and the long put-off funeral sermon that there was an unusually large crowd at the church that day.
“And some of them were disappointed, for when the service was over and we filed out, the Carsons first, past the flower-decked graves to the corner where Andy was buried, there was Andy’s grave adorned with only a plain little head stone. But grouped around it stood his family, and the way that family had improved in the three years since Andy’s death—well, as my mother said, that was a pretty fine monument for Andy, don’t you think so?
“And now don’t forget your ‘apple a day,’ and good night to everybody.”