The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive, with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at intervals monuments to southern heroes:  Lee, Davis, and J.E.B.  Stuart.

The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities, it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks in no small degree to the automobile.  The Country Club of Virginia is out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the country.

Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious cemeteries I have ever seen.  Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis and Fitzhugh Lee.  An inscription on the Davis monument, which was erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy, describes him as “an American soldier and defender of the Constitution.”  At the back of the pedestal is another inscription: 

PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE
STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865. 
FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR
TO PRINCIPLE. 
HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST
CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS
AND STATESMEN.

It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the inscriptions placed upon their tombstones.  Such is the case with James E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years ago.  The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone: 

Until the brakes are turned on Time,
Life’s throttle valve shut down,
He wakes to pilot in the crew
That wear the martyr’s crown.

    On schedule time on upper grade
    Along the homeward section,
    He lands his train at God’s roundhouse
    The morn of resurrection.

    His time all full, no wages docked;
    His name on God’s pay roll. 
    And transportation through to Heaven,
    A free pass for his soul.

In the burial ground of old St. John’s Church—­the building in which Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me Liberty or give me Death” oration—­are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel.