HEATED TERM

There has lately been much suffering here from heat; we have had it upon us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw two cases of sunstroke yesterday, one in Pennsylvania Avenue, and another in Seventh Street. The city railroad company loses some horses every day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probably putting in a more energetic and satisfactory summer, than ever before during its existence. There is probably more human electricity, more population to make it, more business, more light-heartedness, than ever before. The armies that swiftly cir- cumambiated from Fredericksburgh—march’d, struggled, fought, had out their mighty clinch and hurl at Gettysburg—wheel’d, circum- ambiated again, return’d to their ways, touching us not, either at their going or coming. And Washington feels that she has pass’d the worst; perhaps feels that she is henceforth mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills spotted with guns, and is conscious of a character and identity different from what it was five or six short weeks ago, and very considerably pleasanter and prouder.