Wounds heal rapidly when light hearts and clean living add their measure of assistance to the surgeon’s skill. And so it came about that both Bannister and his son were discharged from the hospital a week later. With the surgeon’s certificates in their pockets, they were ready to start toward the North, toward home, toward the sweetest, most life-giving spot in all the world. They would not need to come back, they knew that, for the war was practically over. Richmond had fallen, Lee had surrendered, Johnston’s army would soon be in the hands of Sherman, there was no more fighting to be done. So they went on board a transport one day, and rode down the James and up the Potomac to Washington. It was early in the evening when they reached the city, and after a good meal and a refreshing rest they went out on the streets for a short stroll before retiring. They were to leave Washington on an early train the next morning, and they thought to get a glimpse of it this night in its holiday attire, as it might be many years before either of them would come that way again. It was a beautiful spring night. The air was soft, and heavy with the scent of blossoming lilacs. The night before, the city had been splendidly illuminated in honor of the recent victories and the dawn of peace, and to-night the rejoicings were still going on. The crowds that filled the streets were happy, high-spirited, exultant. Oh, but it was a different city from the one through which Bob Bannister went, on his way to war, in the fall of ’63! Then gloom, anxiety, was on the face of every person who went hurrying by; despondency in the slow gait of every loiterer on the streets. And over the head of the Chief Magistrate hung ever the horror of blood, on his heart weighed ever the apprehension of unforeseen disaster. But to-night, how different! Some one who had seen the President that day said he had not been so happy, so contented, so tender and serene, since he had been in Washington. His son Captain Robert Lincoln had come up from the South and spent the morning with him. Some friends from the West had occupied his joyful attention for a brief time in the afternoon. All who saw him that day never afterward forgot the peaceful and gentle serenity of his face. He had said to the members of his Cabinet at their meeting that morning, that, on his part, there was no feeling of hate or vindictiveness toward any person of the South. That, so far as he could control it, now that the war was over, there should be no persecution, no more bloody work of any kind. That resentment must give way and be extinguished, and harmony and union must prevail.