It was, indeed, a curious scene, especially at night when lit
up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery
above, and the marble pavement under foot--the suffering, and the
fortitude to bear it in various degrees--occasionally, from some, the
groan that could not be repress'd--sometimes a poor fellow dying, with
emaciated face and glassy eye, the nurse by his side, the doctor also
there, but no friend, no relative--such were the sights but lately in
the Patent-office. (The wounded have since been removed from there,
and it is now vacant again.)
THE WHITE HOUSE BY MOONLIGHT
_February 24th._--A spell of fine soft weather. I wander about a good
deal, sometimes at night under the moon. Tonight took a long look at
the President's house. The white portico--the palace-like, tall,
round columns, spotless as snow--the walls also--the tender and
soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faint
languishing shades, not shadows--everywhere a soft transparent
hazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air--the brilliant and
extra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the facade, columns,
portico, &c.--everything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yet
soft--the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there
in the soft and copious moon--the gorgeous front, in the trees, under
the lustrous flooding moon, full of realty, full of illusion--the
forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad--angles of
branches, under the stars and sky--the White House of the land, and of
beauty and night--sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent,
pacing there in blue overcoats--stopping you not at all, but eyeing
you with sharp eyes, whichever way you move.
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