must, without
precipitation, emancipate. We must hold the South as the metropolitan
police holds New York. All this is inevitable. Now I wish to enroll
myself at once in the _Police of the Nation_, and for life, if the
nation will take me. I do not see that I can put myself--experience
and character--to any more useful use..... My experience in this short
campaign with the Seventh assures me that volunteers are for one purpose
and regular soldiers entirely another. We want regular soldiers for the
cause of order in these anarchical countries, and we want men in command
who, though they may be valuable as temporary satraps or proconsuls to
make liberty possible where it is now impossible, will never under any
circumstances be disloyal to _Liberty_, will always oppose any scheme of
any one to constitute a military government, and will be ready, when the
time comes, to imitate Washington. We must think of these things, and
prepare for them..... Love to all the dear friends..... This trip has
been all a lark to an old tramper like myself."

Later he writes,--

"It is the loveliest day of fullest spring. An aspen under the window
whispers to me in a chorus of all its leaves, and when I look out, every
leaf turns a sunbeam at me. I am writing in Viele's quarters in the
villa of Somebody Stone, upon whose place or farm we are encamped. The
man who built and set down these four great granite pillars in front of
his house, for a carriage-porch, had an eye or two for a fine _site_.
This seems to be the finest possible about Washington. It is a terrace
called Meridian Hill, two miles north of Pennsylvania Avenue. The house
commands the vista of the Potomac, all the plain of the city, and a
charming lawn of delicious green, with oaks of first dignity just coming
into leaf. It is lovely Nature, and the spot has snatched a grace
from Art. The grounds are laid out after a fashion, and planted with
shrubbery. The snowballs are at their snowballiest..... Have you heard
or--how many times have you used the simile of some one, Bad-muss or
Cadmus, or another hero, who sowed the dragon's teeth, and they came up
dragoons a hundred-fold and infantry a thousand-fold? _Nil admirari_
is, of course, my frame of mind; but I own astonishment at the crop of
soldiers. They must ripen awhile, perhaps, before they are to be named
quite soldiers. Ripening takes care of itself; and by the harvest-time
they will be ready to cut down.

"I find that the