erica; and there are a half-dozen other
Americas yet to be discovered.

I never realized what this country was and is as on the day when I first
saw some of these gentlemen of the Army and Navy. It was when at the
close of the War our armies came back and marched in review before the
President's stand at Washington. I do not care whether a man was a
Republican or a Democrat, a Northern man or a Southern man, if he had
any emotion of nature, he could not look upon it without weeping. God
knew that the day was stupendous, and He cleared the heaven of cloud and
mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for the
returning warriors to pass under. From Arlington Heights the spring
foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and the
sparkling waters of the Potomac tossed their gold to the feet of the
battalions as they came to the Long Bridge and in almost interminable
line passed over. The Capitol never seemed so majestic as that morning:
snowy white, looking down upon the tides of men that came surging down,
billow after billow. Passing in silence, yet I heard in every step the
thunder of conflicts through which they had waded, and seemed to see
dripping from their smoke-blackened flags the blood of our country's
martyrs. For the best part of two days we stood and watched the filing
on of what seemed endless battalions, brigade after brigade, division
after division, host after host, rank beyond rank; ever moving, ever
passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp--thousands after
thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns solid, shoulder to
shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril.

Commanders on horses with their manes entwined with roses, and necks
enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the
line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white,
standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of
hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!"
Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon
wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of
the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from
balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed
to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen. Those
came out of the coal-shafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side in one great
cause, consecra