During the fortnight or three weeks following the departure of Battery G it became clear to every one that the war was as good as over. It had lasted already a whole year, but now the end was obviously at hand. The Union army had the Rebels cooped up in Yorktown--the identical place where the British had been compelled to surrender at the close of the Revolution--and it was impossible that they should get away. The very coincidence of locality was enough in itself to convince the most skeptical. We read that Fitz John Porter had a balloon fastened by a rope, in which he daily went up and took a look through his field-glasses at the Rebels, all miserably huddled together in their trap, awaiting their doom. Our soldiers wrote home now that final victory could only be a matter of a few weeks, or months at the most. Some of them said they would surely be home by haying time. Their letters no longer dwelt upon battles, or the prospect of battles, but gossiped about the jealousies and quarrels among our generals, who seemed to dislike one another much more than they did the common enemy, and told us long and quite incredible tales about the mud in Virginia. No soldier’s letter that spring was complete without a chapter on the mud. There were many stories about mules and their contraband drivers being bodily sunk out of sight in these weltering seas of mire, and of new boots being made for the officers to come up to their armpits, which we hardly knew whether to believe or not. But about the fact that peace was practically within view there could be no doubt. Under the influence of this mood, Miss Parma-lee’s ambitious project for a grand fair and festival in aid of the Field Hospital and Nurse Fund naturally languished. If the war was coming to a close so soon, there could be no use in going to so much worry and trouble, to say nothing of the expense. Miss Julia seemed to take this view of it herself. She ceased active preparations for the fair, and printed in the Thessaly _Banner of Liberty_ a beautiful poem over her own name entitled “The Dovelike Dawn of White-winged Peace.” She also got herself some new and summery dresses, of gay tints and very fashionable form, and went to be photographed in each. Her almost daily presence at the gallery came, indeed, to be a leading topic of conversation in Octavius. Some said that she was taking lessons of Marsena--learning to make photographs--but others put a different construction on the matter and winked as they did so.