more
Railroad, had already called upon me, with a benevolent and sagacious
look on his face which implied that he knew how to do me a service and
meant to do it. Sure enough, when we got to the depot, we found a couch
spread for the Captain, and both of us were passed on to New York with
no visits, but those of civility, from the conductor. The best thing I
saw on the route was a rustic fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I
am not quite sure. There was more genius in it than in any structure of
the kind I have ever seen,--each length being of a special pattern,
ramified, reticulated, contorted, as the limbs of the trees had grown. I
trust some friend will photograph or stereograph this fence for me, to
go with the view of the spires of Frederick already referred to, as
mementos of my journey.

I had come to feeling that I know most of the respectably dressed people
whom I met in the cars, and had been in contact with them at some time
or other. Three or four ladies and gentlemen were near us, forming
a group by themselves. Presently one addressed me by name, and, on
inquiry, I found him to be the gentleman who was with me in the pulpit
as Orator on the occasion of another Phi Beta Kappa poem, one delivered
at New Haven. The party were very courteous and friendly, and
contributed in various ways to our comfort.

It sometimes seems to me as if there were only about a thousand people
in the world, who keep going round and round behind the scenes and then
before them, like the "army" in a beggarly stage-show. Suppose I should
really wish, some time or other, to get away from this everlasting
circle of revolving supernumeraries, where should I buy a ticket the
like of which was not in some of their pockets, or find a seat to which
some one of them was not a neighbor?

A little less than a year before, after the Ball's-Bluff accident, the
Captain, then the Lieutenant, and myself had reposed for a night on our
homeward journey at the Fifth-Avenue Hotel, where we were lodged on the
ground-floor, and fared sumptuously. We were not so peculiarly fortunate
this time, the house being really very full. Farther from the flowers
and nearer to the stars,--to reach the neighborhood of which last the
_per ardua_ of three or four flights of stairs was formidable for any
mortal, wounded or well. The "vertical railway" settled that for us,
however. It is a giant corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which,
by some divine judgment