LETTER LXIX.
ILLUSTRATING THE IMPERTURBABLE CALMNESS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITOL, AND NOTING THE MEMORABLE INVASION OF ACCOMAC.
Washington, D. C., September 12th, 1862.
As I sit looking out of my window, my boy, on the street below, and notice how tranquilly all things are going on here, despite the excitement of the time, a deep sense of satisfaction steals over me, and the American Eagle of patriotic pride flaps his breezy pinions on the oak tree of my heart. Though I have just been laughing myself almost sick at the ludicrous manner in which my friend, the Confederacy, has walked right straight into the cunning trap prepared for his destruction by our own noble and profound generals, actually hastening his own annihilation by rushing blindly through our lines, and capturing the twenty or thirty artful villages, towns, and garrisons left there for the express purpose of tempting him to his dreadful doom—though I have just been splitting my sides over this roaring case of ridiculous suicide, my boy, the city of Washington still maintains its calmness! Ever conscious that conquer we must, for our cause it is just, this city remains as placid as a summer dream; nearly all the liquor-shops doing a
good business through the day, and the evening finding a majority of our army officers at their posts.
Lamp-posts, my boy.
There is something touchingly grand in the calmness of Washington under such circumstances, and it reminds me of a pleasing little incident in the Sixth Ward.
There was a female millinery establishment on the third floor of a building composed principally of stairs, fed with frequent small rooms, and the expatriated French comtesse, who realized fashionable bonnets there, used one of her windows to display her wares. At this window, my boy, she always kept a young woman of much bloom and symmetry, with the latest Style on her head, and an expression of unutterable smile on her face. A young chap carrying a trumpet in the Fire Department happened to notice that this angel of fashion was always at the window when he went by; and as the thought that she particularly admired his personal charms crept over him, he at once adopted the plan of passing by every day, attired in the garments best calculated to render fire-going manhood most beautiful to the eye. He donned a vest representing in detail the Sydenham flower-show on a yellow ground, wore inexpressibles representing innumerable black serpents ascending white columns, assumed a neck-tie concentrating all the highest glories of the Aurora Borealis, mounted two breast-pins and three studs torn from some glass-house, and wore a hat that slanted on his head in an engaging and intelligent manner. Day after day he passed before the millinery establishment, my boy, still beholding
the beloved object at the window, and occasionally placing his hand upon his heart in such a way as to show a large and gorgeous seal-ring containing the hair of a fellow-fireman who had caught such a cold at a great fire that he died some years after. "How cam she is!" says he to himself, "and she's as pretty as ninety's new hose-carriage. It seems to me," says the young chap to himself, stooping down to roll up the other leg of his pants—"it seems to me that I never see anything so cam. She observes my daily agoing and yet she don't so much as send somebody down to see if there's any overcoats in the front entry."
One day, my boy, a venerable Irish gentleman, keeping a boarding-house and ice-cream saloon in the basement of the establishment, happened to go to sleep on the stairs with a lighted camphene lamp in his hand, and pretty soon the bells were ringing for a conflagration in that district. Immediately our gallant firemen were on their way to the spot; and having first gone through forty-two streets on the other side of the city to wake the people up there and apprise them of their great danger, reached the dreadful scene, and instantly began to extinguish the flames by bringing all the furniture out of a house not more than three blocks below. In the midst of these self-sacrificing efforts, a form was seen to dart into the burning building like a spectre. It was the enamored young chap who carried a trumpet in the department. He had seen the beloved object sitting at the window, as usual, and was bent upon saving her, even though he missed the exciting fight around the corner. Reaching