In Circling Camps Author:Joseph Alexander Altsheler Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A SOLDIEH OF THE REPUBLIC I Visited none of my friends that day, wishing to be alone—that is, alone in a crowd, where I could observe and mysel... more »f pass unnoticed. The drama now unfolding in Washington was of the most absorbing nature, and all my personal interests were involved in it. Yet my own course was clear, and I could watch others. I passed from crowd to crowd, noting the increasing strain of the situation, caused by the arrival of Lincoln, the news of which soon spread throughout the city, and the growing volume of belligerent talk, much of it real. In the course of the afternoon I entered a hotel where the crowd in the public room was the thickest that I had met yet; a crowd, too, which seemed to be wholly Southern. I saw no one whom I knew, and my attention wandering shortly, I began to think of Varian and Elinor and Mrs. Maynard. The thought of these three in connection was not pleasant, but I could not dismiss it. When I looked up again I saw that another man in all that turbulent crowd was silent. The stranger's glance wandered my way presently, and I was drawn by his expression of humorous sympathy. There seemed to be between us the indefinable but mutual attraction of two who are of one mind and differ from those around them, the hostile crowd acting as a force to press them together. I examined this man who held my gaze. He was about fifty, short, dark, thick, his shoulders and chest immense, his face almost as brown as an Indian's, and his hands large and rough. His dress was plain and careless; evidently he was not of high station in life, but the open expression of his broad face, his steady gaze which said, though not offensively, that he considered himself as good as anybody, made him singularly attractive to those who liked strength a...« less