About two A.M., however, the excitement began to subside. President Barbicane reached his house,bruised, crushed, and squeezed almost to a mummy.Hercules could not have resisted a similar outbreak of enthusiasm. The crowd gradually deserted the squares and streets. The four railways from Philadelphia and Washington, Harrisburg and Wheeling, which converge at Baltimore, whirled away the heterogeneous population to the four corners of the United States,and the city subsided into comparative tranquility.