little cherub"--took toll of every man as he passed,--a
heavy toll, namely, every man's whole store of Patriotism and Loyalty.
Every man--so it seems--who passed the Long Bridge was stripped of his
last dollar of _Amor Patriae_, and came to Washington, or went home,
with a waistcoat-pocket full of bogus in change. It was our business now
to open the bridge and see it clear, and leave sentries along to keep it
permanently free for Freedom.

There is a mile of this Long Bridge. We seemed to occupy the whole
length of it, with our files opened to diffuse the weight of our column.
We were not now the tired and sleepy squad which just a moon ago had
trudged along the railroad to the Annapolis Junction, looking up a
Capital and a Government, perhaps lost.

By the time we touched ground across the bridge, dawn was breaking,--a
good omen for poor old sleepy Virginia. The moon, as bright and handsome
as a new twenty-dollar piece, carried herself straight before us,--a
splendid oriflamme.

Lucky is the private who marches with the van! It may be the post of
more danger, but it is also the post of less dust. My throat, therefore,
and my eyes and beard, wore the less Southern soil when we halted half a
mile beyond the bridge, and let sunrise overtake us.

Nothing men can do--except picnics, with ladies in straw flats with
feathers--is so picturesque as soldiering. As soon as the Seventh halt
anywhere, or move anywhere, or camp anywhere, they resolve themselves
into a grand _tableau_.

Their own ranks should supply their own Horace Vernet. Our groups
were never more entertaining than at this halt by the roadside on the
Alexandria road. Stacks of guns make a capital framework for drapery,
and red blankets dot in the lights most artistically. The fellows lined
the road with their gay array, asleep, on the rampage, on the lounge,
and nibbling at their rations.

By-and-by, when my brain had taken in as much of the picturesque as it
could stand, it suffered the brief congestion known as a nap. I was
suddenly awaked by the rattle of a horse's hoofs. Before I had rubbed
my eyes the rider was gone. His sharp tidings had stayed behind him.
Ellsworth was dead,--so he said hurriedly, and rode on. Poor Ellsworth!
a fellow of genius and initiative! He had still so much of the boy in
him, that he rattled forward boyishly, and so died. _Si monumentum
requiris_, look at his regiment. It was a brilliant stroke to levy it;
and if it does worth