Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

IN CIVIL WAR TIME

31

the straggling hotel with a particular fondness for the
mysterious chapel which the process of extension along
Fourteenth Street had included in the establishment. At
other times I would sit in the office and gaze with awe
upon the swarming officers in uniform. Once my uncle
took me up to the Capitol. Congress was not in session.
The chamber of the House of Representatives had been
converted into a temporary hospital for the wounded
arriving daily from General Pope's army. The floor of
the House was closely packed with cots. As we walked
among them I saw the doctors removing a stained bandage from one poor fellow's forehead. There, above closed
eyes and a face graying already at the approach of the end,
was a black ugly hole in a circle of inflammation upon the
temple. It was strangely simple and definite-physically
as simple and obvious as Uncle Henry's blackened fingernail; but I scarcely realized what the round ugly hole
meant.
Several times in the old Willard, and many times in its
grandiose successor, as through a lens at focus I got closeup figures of great personages of the Civil War and of
national politics. Of the Willard memories that persist
in outstanding two more shall here suffice. Three years
after the first visit I went back to that hotel in tow of my
father, the indefatigable collector of autographs, coins,
memorabilia, curios of all sorts. Something of that propensity must have been inherited by me, but nothing of
his systematic thoroughness in the practice. This sojourn
at the inn of Messrs. Sykes, Chadwick & Co., occurred a
few weeks after the culminating events of the war and
a few weeks before the grand review in Washington of the

victorious armies. Sheridan's cavalry had rejoined Meade's
army south of the James. Jefferson Davis had been captured by his pursuers under General James H. Wilson.
Grant, with the instinctive delicacy of a gentleman, had
delegated to General Joshua H. Chamberlain of Maine