r lights, and shipping, came to, at
length, at the foot of Christopher Street. I repaired to the office at
once, and wrote far into the night, refraining, finally, from sheer
blindness and exhaustion, and dropped asleep in the carriage as I was
taken toward the Metropolitan Hotel.

The next day was Friday, July 4, the anniversary of American
Independence, and my version of the six-days' battles caused universal
gloom and grief. I had furnished five pages or forty columns of closely
printed matter, and thousands of tremulous fingers were tracing out the
names of their dead dear ones, while I sipped my wine and rehearsed for
the hundredth time, the incidents of the retreat to a multitude of men.
Cards and letters came to me by the gross, from bereaved countrymen, and
I was obliged, finally, to add a postscript to my account, and a protest
that I knew no more, and could answer no interrogatories. A bath, fresh
clothing, and rich food so far improved my appearance in a few days,
that I presented no other traces of sickness and travel than a sunburnt
face, and a rheumatic walk.

With restoration came a revival of old desires, appetites, and
attachments. It required one additional campaign to sober me in these
respects, and I was not a little relieved, to receive an order on the
fourth day, to proceed to Washington, and attach myself to the "Army of
Virginia" at the head of which Major-General John Pope had just been
placed. After two quieter days' enjoyment, in the Quaker City, I
reported myself at the Capital, but was debarred from taking the field
at once, owing to the tardiness of the new Commander. For two weeks or
more, I loitered around Washington, and although the time passed
monotonously, I saw many persons and events which have much to do with
the history of the Rebellion. The story of "Washington During the War"
has yet to be written in all its vividness of enterprise, devotion, and
infamy. It has been, in periods of peace, a dull, dolorous town, of
mammoth hotels, paltry dwellings, empty lots, prodigiously wide avenues,
a fossil population, and a series of gigantic public buildings, which
seemed dropped by accident into a fifth-rate backwoods settlement.
During the sessions Washington was overrun with "Smartness": Smart
pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart
politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace
here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with none