WASHINGTON City is styled the “City of Magnificent Distances,” because it is laid out to cover a space four and a half miles long by two and a half miles wide, that is, eleven square miles. It is the Capital of the United States of America, and is composed of the Capitol building, the Treasury building, the Post-Office building, the Patent Office building, the Executive Mansion, War and State Department buildings, the Smithsonian Institute, Willard’s Hotel and five thousand gin-mills. Such is the Capital of our country, the “City of Magnificent Distances:” and if it were a magnificent distance from the Country, the Country would be much better off and much more well-to-do in the world. I regret that a city which bears the name of that noble and pure man, George Washington, should be such a concentration of vice, corruption, intrigue, fraud and iniquity, as it has become of late years. It was night when I reached Washington, and going to an hotel and registering my name, John Smith, Major U. S. Army—I never go below the rank of major—I received every attention. While there, my bill was only twenty-five or thirty dollars a week, which they did not ask me to pay till I was ready to leave, several weeks after, and then I paid it without being asked. Meantime all the _attaches_ of the hotel were so attentive, obliging and polite, that I did not find it necessary to kill a single one of them. The day following my arrival in Washington, the weather being fine, I walked out to Tenallytown, three miles from Georgetown, to visit the old ground on which I had been encamped for several months, while a soldier, early in the war. I found the ground without difficulty, as well as a handsome earthwork our division had thrown up while there, and which I myself had worked on. It had been originally named Fort Pennsylvania, but was now called Fort Reno. Thinking I should like to walk in I approached the entrance, and found it guarded by a negro soldier, with musket and bayonet; while a sable corporal stood talking to him. “You can’t come in dis place, sah,” said the corporal with an insolent grin, before I was near enough to solicit admittance. I could not help feeling cut by such a greeting as this, from a negro, at the entrance of a fort I had helped to build. I smothered my rising indignation, however, and with a sunny smile replied: “No admittance, eh?” “No, sah; guess not,” was the taunting reply. “I did not know that,” I rejoined, still keeping down my wrath. “I helped to build the fort, and thought I would like to take a look through it. However, I suppose you are ordered to allow no one to enter.” “Guess we is. You helped to build it, eh?” “Yes.” “You didn’t tink den us cullud fellahs ’d git possession!” he said, with an insolent laugh. Without replying I turned and walked away.