"Union, Sherman and Grant"
On Pennsylvania Avenue, the hotels and stores had hung every window, awning, cornice and swaying tree-top with lanterns. The grand avenue was bridged by tri-coloured balloons floating and shimmering ghost-like far up in the dark sky. Above these, in the blacker zone toward the stars, the heavens were flashing sheets of chameleon flames from bursting rockets.
Margaret had never dreamed such a spectacle. She walked in awed silence, now and then suppressing a sob for the memory of those she had loved and lost. A moment of bitterness would cloud her heart, and then with the sense of Phil's nearness, his generous nature, the beauty and goodness of his sister, and all they owed to her for Ben's life, the cloud would pass.
At every public building, and in front of every great hotel, bands were playing. The wild war strains, floating skyward, seemed part of the changing scheme of light. The odour of burnt powder and smouldering rockets filled the warm spring air.
The deep bay of the great fort guns now began to echo from every hill-top commanding the city, while a thousand smaller guns barked and growled from every square and park and crossing.
Jay Cooke & Co.'s banking-house had stretched across its front, in enormous blazing letters, the words:
"The Busy B's—Balls, Ballots and Bonds"
Every telegraph and newspaper office was a roaring whirlpool of excitement, for the same scenes were being
