_February 23._--I must not let the great hospital at the Patent-office pass away without some mention. A few weeks ago the vast area of the second story of that noblest of Washington buildings was crowded close with rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. They were placed in three very large apartments. I went there many times. It was a strange, solemn, and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe and relieve particular cases. Two of the immense apartments are fill'd with high and ponderous glass cases, crowded with models in miniature of every kind of utensil, machine or invention, it ever enter'd into the mind of man to conceive; and with curiosities and foreign presents. Between these cases are lateral openings, perhaps eight feet wide and quite deep, and in these were placed the sick, besides a great long double row of them up and down through the middle of the hall. Many of them were very bad cases, wounds and amputations. Then there was a gallery running above the hall in which there were beds also. It was, indeed, a curious scene, especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement under foot--the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it in various degrees--occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be repress'd--sometimes a poor fellow dying, with emaciated face and glassy eye, the nurse by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no relative--such were the sights but lately in the Patent-office. (The wounded have since been removed from there, and it is now vacant again.) THE WHITE HOUSE BY MOONLIGHT _February 24th._--A spell of fine soft weather. I wander about a good deal, sometimes at night under the moon. Tonight took a long look at the President's house. The white portico--the palace-like, tall, round columns, spotless as snow--the walls also--the tender and soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faint languishing shades, not shadows--everywhere a soft transparent hazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air--the brilliant and extra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the façade, columns, portico, &c.--everything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yet soft--the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon--the gorgeous front, in the trees, under the lustrous flooding moon, full of realty, full of illusion--the forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad--angles of branches, under the stars and sky--the White House of the land, and of beauty and night--sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pacing there in blue overcoats--stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes, whichever way you move. AN ARMY HOSPITAL WARD