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June 29.—JUST before sundown this evening a very large cavalry force went by—a fine sight. The men evidently had seen service. First came a mounted band of sixteen bugles, drums and cymbals, playing wild martial tunes—made my heart jump. Then the principal off...

EVERY now and then, in hospital or camp, there are beings I meet—specimens of unworldliness, disinterestedness, and animal purity and heroism—perhaps some unconscious Indianian, or from Ohio or Tennessee—on whose birth the calmness of heaven seems to have desc...

I AM back again in Washington, on my regular daily and nightly rounds. Of course there are many specialties. Dotting a ward here and there are always cases of poor fellows, long-suffering under obstinate wounds, or weak and dishearten’d from typhoid fever, or ...

DILAPIDATED, fenceless, and trodden with war as Virginia is, wherever I move across her surface, I find myself rous’d to surprise and admiration. What capacity for products, improvements, human life, nourishment and expansion. Everywhere that I have been in th...

ABOUT the excitement of Sunday, and the orders to be ready to start, I have heard since that the said orders came from some cautious minor commander, and that the high principalities knew not and thought not of any such move; which is likely. The rumor and fea...

ONE of the things to note here now is the arrival of the paymaster with his strong box, and the payment of bounties to veterans re-enlisting. Major H. is here to-day, with a small mountain of greenbacks, rejoicing the hearts of the 2d division of the First cor...

CULPEPPER, VA., Feb. ’64.—HERE I am pretty well down toward the extreme front. Three or four days ago General S., who is now in chief command, (I believe Meade is absent, sick,) moved a strong force southward from camp as if intending business. They went to th...

TO add to other troubles, amid the confusion of this great army of sick, it is almost impossible for a stranger to find any friend or relative, unless he has the patient’s specific address to start upon. Besides the directory printed in the newspapers here, th...

AMONG other sights are immense droves of cattle with their drivers, passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite musical, prolong’d, indescribable, sounding something ...

October 20th.—TO-NIGHT, after leaving the hospital at 10 o’clock, (I had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closely confined,) I wander’d a long time around Washington. The night was sweet, very clear, sufficiently cool, a voluptuous half-moon, ...

July 4th.—THE WEATHER to-day, upon the whole, is very fine, warm, but from a smart rain last night, fresh enough, and no dust, which is a great relief for this city. I saw the parade about noon, Pennsylvania avenue, from Fifteenth street down toward the capito...

Aug., Sep., and Oct., ’63.—I AM in the habit of going to all, and to Fairfax seminary, Alexandria, and over Long bridge to the great Convalescent camp. The journals publish a regular directory of them—a long list. As a specimen of almost any one of the larger ...

ANOTHER characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notes of my visit to Armory-square hospital, one hot but pleasant summer day. In ward H we approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the Wisconsin regiments. Tread the bare board floor ligh...

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...

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 l...

August 12th.—I SEE the President almost every day, as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north of the city, the...

August 8th.—TO-NIGHT, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and entering the ward where the music was, I walk’d half-way...

THIS afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber, company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhœa, and a bad wound also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied, and ask’d him what I should read. He said, ...

I AM writing this, nearly sundown, watching a cavalry company (acting Signal service,) just come in through a shower, making their night’s camp ready on some broad, vacant ground, a sort of hill, in full view opposite my window. There are the men in their yell...

IT is plain to me out of the events of the war, north and south, and out of all considerations, that the current military theory, practice, rules and organization, (adopted from Europe from the feudal institutes, with, of course, the “modern improvements,” lar...