ng on what doesn't exist--a higher physical courage--a prowess
in battle, I may call it, that you must know the Southern soldier has
not, as distinguished from the Northern. As time goes on and the war
does not end; as our armies become disciplined, the confidence that
supports your side will die, and then the struggle, though it may be
prolonged, will end in our triumph."

"I don't think it. I can't think it. But don't let us talk about it. We,
at least, are as much friends as though Jack and I were under one flag,
and if it depends on me it shall be always so."

"If it depends on us, it shall never be otherwise." She gave the young
man a kind, scrutinizing glance, which made his heart beat joyously and
his handsome cheeks mount color. At Fairfax Court-House they said
farewell, the ladies continuing the journey in an ambulance under
Federal guard.

They passed over the long bridge three days after the famous night at
Rosedale, of whose exciting sequel they were profoundly ignorant. In her
husband's time Mrs. Sprague had lived in hotels in the capital, as the
sessions were short; she had never remained in the city when the warm
weather set in, no matter how long the term lasted. But on her arrival
at the old hotel now, she was a good deal disturbed to learn that she
could not be accommodated in her former quarters. The military crowded
not only this but every hotel in the city, and it was only after long
search that a habitable apartment was found in Georgetown. On the whole,
the necessity that drove her thither was not an unmitigated adversity,
for Georgetown then was far more desirable for residence than
Washington. Nothing could be more depressing than the city at that
epoch. Every visible object in the vast circumference of its spreading
limits was then naked unkempt. Even the trees, that ranged themselves
irregularly in the straggling squares and wide street areas, stretched
out a draggled and piebald plumage, as if uncertain whether beauty or
ugliness were their function in the _ensemble_.

The photographic realism of the later newspaper correspondent had not
come into play in these earlier years of the war, and, as a consequence,
the thousands who poured down to the Army of the Potomac beheld the city
with something of the incredulous scorn with which the effeminate
Byzantines regarded the capital of the Goths, when the corrupt
descendant of Constantine made the savage Dacians his allies, rather
than fight th