As railway companions, they had now and then a volunteer in his French-gray great coat, returning from furlough, or a new-made officer travelling to join his regiment in his new-made uniform, which was perhaps all of the military character that he had about him; but proud of his eagle buttons, and likely enough to, do them honor before the gilt should be wholly dimmed. The country, in short, so far as bustle and movement went, was more quiet than in ordinary times, because so large a proportion of its restless elements had been drawn towards the seat of conflict. But the air was full of a vague disturbance. The author's patriotic alarm seems to have been especially excited by the host of embryo warriors that filled the cars and thronged the stations all along the journey. One cause of this terror will seem to us now all the more amusing because there are not wanting those who will doubtless honestly believe that in giving it expression he wrote with something of prophetic unction:-- "One terrible idea occurs in reference to this matter. Even supposing the war should end to-morrow, and the army melt into the mass of the population within the year, what an incalculable preponderance will there be of military titles and pretentions for at least half a century to come! Every country neighborhood will have its general or two, its three or four colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without end--besides noncommissioned officers and privates, more than the recruiting officers ever knew of,--all with their campaign stories which will become the staple of fireside talk forevermore. "Military merit, or rather, since that is not so readily estimated, military notoriety, will be the measure of all claims to civil distinction. "One bullet-headed general will succeed another in the presidential chair; and veterans will hold the offices at home and abroad, and sit in Congress and the State Legislature, and fill all the avenues of public life. And yet I do not speak of this deprecatingly, since, very likely, it may substitute something more real and genuine, instead of the many shams on which men have heretofore founded their claims to public regard; but it behooves civilians to consider their wretched prospects in the future, and assume the military button before it is too late." The day of their arrival in Washington was the date of McClellan's historic movement on Manassas:-- "On the very day of our arrival sixty thousand men had crossed the Potomac on their march towards Manassas; and almost with their first steps into the Virginia mud, the phantasmagory of a countless host and impregnable ramparts, before which they had so long remained quiescent, dissolved quite away.