army of a million men was brought down, with
incredible ease and celerity, to one of twenty-five thousand.

Before the great army melted away into the greater body of citizens, the
soldiers enjoyed one final triumph, a march through the capital,
undisturbed by death or danger, under the eyes of their highest
commanders, military and civilian, and the representatives of the people
whose nationality they had saved. Those who witnessed this solemn yet
joyous pageant will never forget it, and will pray that their children
may never witness anything like it. For two days this formidable host
marched the long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, starting from the
shadow of the dome of the Capitol, and filling that wide thoroughfare to
Georgetown with a serried mass, moving with the easy yet rapid pace of
veterans in cadence step. As a mere spectacle this march of the
mightiest host the continent has ever seen gathered together was grand
and imposing; but it was not as a spectacle alone that it affected the
beholder most deeply. It was not a mere holiday parade; it was an army
of citizens on their way home after a long and terrible war. Their
clothes were worn and pierced with bullets; their banners had been torn
with shot and shell, and lashed in the winds of a thousand battles; the
very drums and fifes had called out the troops to numberless night
alarms, and sounded the onset on historic fields. The whole country
claimed these heroes as a part of themselves. And now, done with
fighting, they were going joyously and peaceably to their homes, to take
up again the tasks they had willingly laid down in the hour of their
country's peril.

The world had many lessons to learn from this great conflict, which
liberated a subject people and changed the tactics of modern warfare;
but the greatest lesson it taught the nations of waiting Europe was the
conservative power of democracy--that a million men, flushed with
victory, and with arms in their hands, could be trusted to disband the
moment the need for their services was over, and take up again the
soberer labors of peace.

Friends loaded these veterans with flowers as they swung down the
Avenue, both men and officers, until some were fairly hidden under their
fragrant burden. There was laughter and applause; grotesque figures were
not absent as Sherman's legions passed, with their "bummers" and their
regimental pets; but with all the shouting and the laughter and the joy
of this unp