We began to feel like an army as these thousands thronged by us.  This was evidently a movement in force.  We rested an hour or more by the road.  Mounted officers galloping along down the lines kept up the excitement.

At last we had the word to fall in again and march.  It is part of the simple perfection of the machine, a regiment, that, though it drops to pieces for a rest, it comes together instantly for a start, and nobody is confused or delayed.  We moved half a mile farther, and presently a broad pathway of reflected moonlight shone up at us from the Potomac.

No orders, at this, came from the Colonel, “Attention, battalion!  Be sentimental!” Perhaps privates have no right to perceive the beautiful.  But the sections in my neighborhood murmured admiration.  The utter serenity of the night was most impressive.  Cool and quiet and tender the moon shone upon our ranks.  She does not change her visage, whether it be lovers or burglars or soldiers who use her as a lantern to their feet.

The Long Bridge thus far has been merely a shabby causeway with waterways and draws.  Shabby,—­let me here pause to say that in Virginia shabbiness is the grand universal law, and neatness the spasmodic exception, attained in rare spots, an aeon beyond their Old Dominion age.

The Long Bridge has thus far been a totally unhistoric and prosaic bridge.  Roads and bridges are making themselves of importance and shining up into sudden renown in these times.  The Long Bridge has done nothing hitherto except carry passengers on its back across the Potomac.  Hucksters, planters, dry-goods drummers, Members of Congress, et ea genera omnia, have here gone and come on their several mercenary errands, and, as it now appears, some sour little imp—­the very reverse of a “sweet little cherub”—­took toll of every man as he passed,—­a heavy toll, namely, every man’s whole store of Patriotism and Loyalty.  Every man—­so it seems—­who passed the Long Bridge was stripped of his last dollar of Amor Patriae, and came to Washington, or went home, with a waistcoat-pocket full of bogus in change.  It was our business now to open the bridge and see it clear, and leave sentries along to keep it permanently free for Freedom.

There is a mile of this Long Bridge.  We seemed to occupy the whole length of it, with our files opened to diffuse the weight of our column.  We were not now the tired and sleepy squad which just a moon ago had trudged along the railroad to the Annapolis Junction, looking up a Capital and a Government, perhaps lost.

By the time we touched ground across the bridge, dawn was breaking,—­a good omen for poor old sleepy Virginia.  The moon, as bright and handsome as a new twenty-dollar piece, carried herself straight before us,—­a splendid oriflamme.

Lucky is the private who marches with the van!  It may be the post of more danger, but it is also the post of less dust.  My throat, therefore, and my eyes and beard, wore the less Southern soil when we halted half a mile beyond the bridge, and let sunrise overtake us.