They found themselves, on merely crossing a river, suddenly landed in a city as wholly different from anything they had seen since the war as if it had been a foreign capital. The handsome streets and busy thoroughfares filled with well-dressed throngs; gay with flashing equipages, and all the insignia of wealth, appeared all the more brilliant from the sudden contrast. As the party walked through the city they appeared to themselves to be almost the poorest persons they saw, at least among the whites. The city was full of negroes at this time. These seemed to represent mainly the two extremes of prosperity and poverty. The gentlemen could not walk on the street without being applied to by some old man or woman who was in want, and who, as long as the visitors had anything to give, needed only to ask to be assisted. “We are like lost souls on the banks of the Styx,” said Dr. Cary. “I feel as much a stranger as if I were on another planet. And to think that our grandfathers helped to make this nation!” “To think that we ever surrendered!” exclaimed General Legaie, with a flash in his eye. They took lodgings at a little boarding-house, and called next day in a body on the Head of the Nation, but were unable to see him; then they waited on one after another of several high officers of the Government whom they believed to be dominant in the national councils. Some they failed to get access to; others heard them civilly, but with undisguised coldness. At one place they were treated rudely by a negro door-keeper, whose manner was so insolent that the General turned on him sharply with a word and a gesture that sent him bouncing inside the door. After this interview, as Dr. Cary was making his way back to his boarding-house, he met one of his old servants. The negro was undisguisedly glad to see him. He wrung his hand again and again. “You’s de fust frien’, master, I’s seen since I been heah!” he said. “You are the first friend, John, I have seen,” said the Doctor, smiling. He put his hand in his pocket and gave the old man a bank-note. As the Doctor was engaged in this colloquy he was observed with kindly interest or amusement by many passers-by—among them, by an elderly and handsomely dressed couple, accompanied by a very pretty girl, who were strolling along, and loitered for a moment within earshot to observe the two strangers. “What a picturesque figure!” said the lady as they passed on. “Which one?” “Well, both. I almost thought of them as one. I wish, Alice, you could have got a sketch of them as they stood.”