a horn of Bourbon whiskey as a toper of the present century would be
loath to venture upon. But, really, one would be glad to know where
these strange figures come from. It shows, at any rate, how many
remote, decaying villages and country-neighborhoods of the North, and
forest-nooks of the West, and old mansion-houses in cities, are shaken
by the tremor of our native soil, so that men long hidden in retirement
put on the garments of their youth and hurry out to inquire what is the
matter. The old men whom we see here have generally more marked faces
than the young ones, and naturally enough; since it must be an
extraordinary vigor and renewability of life that can overcome the
rusty sloth of age, and keep the senior flexible enough to take an
interest in new things; whereas hundreds of commonplace young men come
hither to stare with eyes of vacant wonder, and with vague hopes of
finding out what they are fit for. And this war (we may say so much in
its favor) has been the means of discovering that important secret to
not a few.

We saw at Willard's many who had thus found out for themselves, that,
when Nature gives a young man no other utilizable faculty, she must be
understood as intending him for a soldier. The bulk of the army had
moved out of Washington before we reached the city; yet it seemed to
me that at least two-thirds of the guests and idlers at the hotel wore
one or another token of the military profession. Many of them, no
doubt, were self-commissioned officers, and had put on the buttons and
the shoulder-straps, and booted themselves to the knees, merely
because captain, in these days, is so good a travelling-name. The
majority, however, had been duly appointed by the President, but might
be none the better warriors for that. It was pleasant, occasionally,
to distinguish a grizzly veteran among this crowd of carpet-knights,
--the trained soldier of a lifetime, long ago from West Point,