_October 20th_.--To-night, after leaving the hospital at 10 o'clock, (I
had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closely confined,)
I wander'd a long time around Washington. The night was sweet, very
clear, sufficiently cool, a voluptuous halfmoon, slightly golden, the
space near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. I walk'd up Pennsylvania
avenue, and then to Seventh street, and a long while around the
Patent-office. Somehow it look'd rebukefully strong, majestic, there in
the delicate moonlight. The sky, the planets, the constellations all
so bright, so calm, so expressively silent, so soothing, after those
hospital scenes. I wander'd to and fro till the moist moon set, long
after midnight.