the heart of Washington, and
the Willard caravansary, came friends new and old, with bottles,
baskets, carriages and invitations for the invalid; and daily our
Florence Nightingale climbed the steep stairs, stealing a moment from
her busy life, to watch over the stranger, of whom she was as
thoughtfully tender as any mother. Long may she wave! Whatever others
may think or say, Nurse Periwinkle is forever grateful; and among her
relics of that Washington defeat, none is more valued than the little
book which appeared on her pillow, one dreary day; for the D D. written
in it means to her far more than Doctor of Divinity.

Being forbidden to meddle with fleshly arms and legs, I solaced myself
by mending cotton ones, and, as I sat sewing at my window, watched the
moving panorama that passed below; amusing myself with taking notes of
the most striking figures in it. Long trains of army wagons kept up a
perpetual rumble from morning till night; ambulances rattled to and fro
with busy surgeons, nurses taking an airing, or convalescents going in
parties to be fitted to artificial limbs. Strings of sorry looking
horses passed, saying as plainly as dumb creatures could, "Why, in a
city full of them, is there no horsepital for us?" Often a cart came
by, with several rough coffins in it and no mourners following;
barouches, with invalid officers, rolled round the corner, and carriage
loads of pretty children, with black coachmen, footmen, and maids. The
women who took their walks abroad, were so extinguished in three story
bonnets, with overhanging balconies of flowers, that their charms were
obscured; and all I can say of them is that they dressed in the worst
possible taste, and walked like ducks.

The men did the picturesque, and did it so well that Washington looked
like a mammoth masquerade. Spanish hats, scarlet lined riding cloaks,
swords and sashes, high boots and bright spurs, beards and mustaches,
which made plain faces comely, and comely faces heroic; these vanities
of the flesh transformed our butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers
into gallant riders of gaily caparisoned horses, much handsomer than
themselves; and dozens of such figures were constantly prancing by,
with private prickings of spurs, for the benefit of the perambulating
flower-bed. Some of these gentlemen affected painfully tight uniforms,
and little caps, kept on by some new law of gravitation, as they
covered only the bridge of the nose, yet never f