England save the fireside. It was a clear, frosty morning, when we
started. The sun shone brightly on snow-covered hills in the
neighborhood of Boston, and burnished the surface of frozen ponds; and
the wintry weather kept along with us while we trundled through
Worcester and Springfield, and all those old, familiar towns, and
through the village-cities of Connecticut. In New York the streets were
afloat with liquid mud and slosh. Over New Jersey there was still a
thin covering of snow, with the face of Nature visible through the
rents in her white shroud, though with little or no symptom of reviving
life. But when we reached Philadelphia, the air was mild and balmy;
there was but a patch or two of dingy winter here and there, and the
bare, brown fields about the city were ready to be green. We had met
the Spring half-way, in her slow progress from the South; and if we
kept onward at the same pace, and could get through the Rebel lines, we
should soon come to fresh grass, fruit-blossoms, green peas,
strawberries, and all such delights of early summer.

On our way, we heard many rumors of the war, but saw few signs of it.
The people were staid and decorous, according to their ordinary
fashion; and business seemed about as brisk as usual,--though, I
suppose, it was considerably diverted from its customary channels into
warlike ones. In the cities, especially in New York, there was a rather
prominent display of military goods at the shopwindows,--such as
swords with gilded scabbards and trappings, epaulets, carabines,
revolvers, and sometimes a great iron cannon at the edge of the
pavement, as if Mars had dropped one of his pocket-pistols there,
while hurrying to the field. As railway-companions, we had now and then
a volunteer in his French-gray great-coat, returning from furlough, or
a new-made officer travelling to join his regiment, in his new-made
uniform, which was perhaps all of the military character that he had