In
the cities, especially in New York, there was a rather prominent display
of military goods at the shop windows,--such as swords with gilded
scabbards and trappings, epaulets, carabines, revolvers, and sometimes a
great iron cannon at the edge of the pavement, as if Mars had dropped
one of his pocket-pistols there, while hurrying to the field. As
railway-companions, we 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 the conflict. But
the air was full of a vague disturbance. To me, at least, it seemed so,
emerging from such a solitude as has been hinted at, and the more
impressible by rumors and indefinable presentiments, since I had not
lived, like other men, in an atmosphere of continual talk about the war.
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