There has lately been much suffering here from heat; we have had it
upon us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw
two cases of sun-stroke yesterday, one in Pennsylvania avenue, and
another in Seventh street. The City railroad company loses some horses
every day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probably
putting in a more energetic and satisfactory summer, than ever before
during its existence. There is probably more human electricity, more
population to make it, more business, more light-heartedness,
than ever before. The armies that swiftly circumambiated from
Fredericksburgh--march'd, struggled, fought, had out their mighty
clinch and hurl at Gettysburg--wheel'd, circumambiated again, return'd
to their ways, touching us not, either at their going or coming. And
Washington feels that she has pass'd the worst; perhaps feels that she
is henceforth mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills
spotted with guns, and is conscious of a character and identity
different from what it was five or six short weeks ago, and very
considerably pleasanter and prouder.


SOLDIERS AND TALKS

Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the city,
often superb-looking men, though invalids dress'd in worn uniforms,
and carrying canes or crutches. I often have talks with them,
occasionally quite long and interesting. One, for instance, will have
been all through the peninsula under McClellan--narrates to me the
fights, the marches, the strange, quick changes of that eventful
campaign, and gives glimpses of many things untold in any official
reports or books or journals. These, indeed, are the things that are