rgued
through a white, bilious eye and a huge mouth. There was General
Mitchel, also, who has since passed away,--a little, knotty gentleman,
with stiff, gray, Jacksonian hair. And General Sturgis passed in and out
perpetually, with impressive, individual Banks, or some less prominent
person, all of them wearing the gold star upon their shoulders, and
absolute masters of some thousands of souls. The town, in fact, was
overrun with troops. Slovenly guards were planted on horseback at
crossings, and now and then they dashed, as out of a profound sleep, to
chase some galloping cavalier. Gin and Jews swarmed along the Avenue,
and I have seen gangs of soldiers of rival regiments, but oftener of
rival nationalities, pummelling each other in the highways, until they
were marched off by the Provosts. The number of houses of ill-fame was
very great, and I have been told that Generals and Lieutenants of the
same organization often encountered and recognized each other in them.
Contractors and "jobbers" used to besiege the offices of the Secretaries
of War and Navy, and the venerable Welles (who reminded me of Abraham in
the lithographs), and the barnacled Stanton, seldom appeared in public.
Simple-minded, straightforward A. Lincoln, and his ambitious, clever
lady, were often seen of afternoons in their barouche; the little
old-fashioned Vice-President walked unconcernedly up and down; and when
some of the Richmond captives came home to the Capital, immense meetings
were held, where patriotism bawled itself hoarse. A dining hour at
Willard's was often wondrously adapted for a historic picture, when
accoutred officers, and their beautiful wives,--or otherwise,--sat at
the _table d'-hote_, and sumptuous dishes flitted here and there, while
corks popped like so many Chinese crackers, and champagne bubbled up
like blood. At night, the Provost Guard enacted the farce of coming by
deputations to each public bar, which was at once closed, but reopened
five minutes afterward. Congress water was in great demand for weak
heads of mornings, and many a young lad, girt up for war, wasted his
strength in dissipation here, so that he was worthless afield, and
perhaps died in the hospital. The curse of civil war was apparent
everywhere. One had but to turn his eye from the bare Heights of
Arlington, where the soldiers of the Republic lay demoralized, to the
fattening vultures who smoked and swore at the National, to see the true
cause of the North