A common remark of the Civil War years, made by the novel’s Parthenia Leila Ellis, expressing frustration at the routine horror of the masses of corpses left unburied by both sides on major battlefields.

As if to say that in one’s helplessness to do anything about it, one should, instead, devote one’s thinking and energy to the living.

Its origin is from a controversial quotation of Jesus in Matthew 8: 18-22 in the Christian Bible which is sometimes interpreted to mean that the living should serve god rather than serve the dead.