ost-Marshal's. A City of the Dead. Starvation plus
Suspense. The Tin-Can Brigade. Drawing Rations. Rumors and Reality.
The First Gray Jacket returns. General Lee re-enters Richmond. Woman,
the Comforter. Lincoln's Assassination. Resulting Rigors. Baits for
Sociability. How Ladies acted. Lectures by Old Friends. The Emigration
Mania. Fortunate Collapse of Agreement. The Negro's Status. To Work, or
Starve. Woman's Aid. Dropping the Curtain.

FOUR YEARS IN REBEL CAPITALS.

CHAPTER I.

THE FOREHEAD OF THE STORM.

The cloud no bigger than a man's hand had risen.

It became visible to all in Washington over the southern horizon. All
around to East and West was but the dull, dingy line of the storm that
was soon to burst in wild fury over that section, leaving only seared
desolation in its wake. Already the timid and wary began to take in
sail and think of a port; while the most reckless looked from the
horizon to each other's faces, with restless and uneasy glances.

In the days of 1860, as everybody knows, the society of Washington city
was composed of two distinct circles, tangent at no one point. The
larger, outer circle whirled around with crash and fury several months
in each year; then, spinning out its centrifugal force, flew into
minute fragments and scattered to extreme ends of the land. The smaller
one--the inner circle--revolved sedately in its accustomed grooves,
moving no whit faster for the buzz of the monster that surrounded and
half hid it for so long; and when that spun itself to pieces moved on
as undisturbed as Werther's Charlotte.

The outer circle drew with it all the outside population, all the
"dwellers in tents," from the busiest lobbyman to the laziest
looker-on. All the "hotel people"--those caravans that yearly poured
unceasing into the not too comfortable _caravanserai_ down
town--stretched eager hands toward this circle; for, to them, it meant
Washington. Having clutched an insecure grasp upon its rim, away they
went with a fizz and a spin, dizzy and delighted--devil take the
hindmost! Therein did the thousand lobbyists, who yearly came to roll
logs, pull wires and juggle through bills, find their congenial prey.

Who shall rise up and write the secret history of that wonderful
committee and of the ways and means it used to prey impartially upon
government and client? Who shall record the "deeds without a name,"
hatched out of eggs from the midnight terrapin; the strange sec