Chapter XXXI: Letter XXIV

NARRATING THE MACKEREL BRIGADE'S MANNER OF CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS, AND NOTING A DEADLY AFFAIR OF HONOR BETWEEN TWO WELL-KNOWN OFFICERS.

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 26th, 1861.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, my boy, and the same to yourself. The recurrence of these gay old annuals makes me feel as ancient as the First Families of Virginia, and as grave as a church-yard. How well I remember my first Christmas! Early in the morning, my dignified paternal presented me with a beautiful spanking, and then my maternal touched me up with her slipper to stop my crying. Sensible people are the women of America, my boy; they slap a boy on his upper end, which makes him howl, and then hit him on the other end to stop his noise. There's good logic in the idea, my boy. That first Christmas of mine was memorable from the fact that my present was a drum, on which I executed a new opera of my own composition with such good effect, that in the evening, a deputation of superannuated neighbors and old maids waited on my father with a petition that he would send me to sea immediately.

But to return to the present, suffer me to observe that last Wednesday was celebrated by the Mackerel Brigade in a manner worthy of the occasion. Two hundred turkeys belonging to the Southern Confederacy were served up for dinner, and from what I tasted, I am satisfied that they belonged to the First Families. They were very tough, my boy.

In the evening, there was a ball, to which a number of the women of America were invited. Captain Villiam Brown came up from Accomac on purpose to attend, and looked, as the General of the Mackerel Brigade genteelly expressed it, like a bag of indigo that had been out without an umbrella in a hard shower of brass buttons. The general has an acute perception of the Beautiful, my boy.

Villiam took the Oath six times, and then took a survey of the festive scene through the bottom of a tumbler. The first person he recognized was the youngest Miss Muggins, waltzing like a deranged balloon with Captain Bob Shorty. Captain Bob was spinning around like a dislocated pair of tongs, and smirked like a happy fiend. Villiam gave one stare, put the tumbler in his pocket, and then made a bee-line for the pair.

"Miss Muggins," says he, "you'll obleege me by dropping that air mass of brass buttons and moustaches, and dancing with me."

"I beg your parding, sir," says Miss Muggins, with dignity, "but I chooses my own company."

"Villiam," says Captain Bob Shorty, "if you don't take that big nose of yours away, it will be my painful duty to set it a little further back in your repulsive countenance."

Then Villiam _was_ mad. He hastily buttoned his coat up to the neck, took a bite of tobacco, and says he:

"Captain Shorty, we have lived like br-r-others; I have borrowed many a quarter of you; and you promised that when I died, you would wrap me up in the American flag. But now you are mine enemy, and--ha! ha!--I am yours. Wilt fight?"

'Twas enough!

"I wilt," responded Captain Bob Shorty. And in ten minutes' time these desperate men stood face to face on the banks of the Potomac, the ghastly moon looking solemnly down upon them through a rift of floating shrouds; and one of the First Families of Virginia pickets squinting at them from a neighboring bush. Villiam's second was Colonel Wobert Wobinson of the Western Cavalry, Captain Bob Shorty's was Samyule Sa-mith. The fifth of the party was a fat surgeon from St. Louis, who stood with his sleeves rolled up and a big jack-knife in his hand. The surgeon also had a stomach pump with him, my boy, and twelve boxes of anti-bilious pills. The weapons were pistols, and the distance seventy paces.

Captain Villiam Brown was observed to shiver, as he took his place, and was so cold, that he took aim at the surgeon instead of his antagonist. The surgeon called his attention to this little error; and he immediately rectified his mistake by pointing his weapon point-blank at Samyule Sa-mith.

"You blood-thirsty cuss!" shouted Samyule, with great emotion, "what are you pointing at me for?"

"I was thinking of my poor grandmother," said Villiam, feelingly; and immediately fired at the moon.

Simultaneously, Captain Bob Shorty sent his bullet skimming along the ground, in the direction of Washington, and said that he wanted to go home.

The surgeon decided that nobody was hurt; and the two infuriated principals commenced to reload their pistols, with horrible calmness.

Now it came to pass, that while Captain Villiam Brown was stooping down fixing his weapon, his hand became unsteady, and he pulled the trigger, without meaning to. Bang! went the concern, and whiz! went the ball right between the legs of Colonel Wobert Wobinson, causing that noble officer to skip four times, and swear awfully.

"Treachery!" says Captain Bob Shorty, spinning around in great excitement, and letting drive at Samyule Sa-mith who happened to be nearest.

"Gaul darn ye!" screamed Samyule, turning purple in the face, "you've gone and shot all the rim of my cap off."

"I couldn't help it," says Bob, looking into the barrel of his pistol with great intensity of gaze.

At this moment, Villiam, who had loaded up again, tried to put the hammer of his weapon down on the cap; but his hand slipped, and the charge exploded, barking the shins of the fat surgeon, and sending a bullet clean through his stomach-pump.

The surgeon just took a seat, my boy, rubbed his shins half a second, took four boxes of pills, and then began to cuss! Marshal Rynders can cuss _some_, my boy, but that fat surgeon could beat him and all the Custom-House together.

But suddenly a strange sound reduced all else to silence. It came first like the rumbling of a barrel of potatoes, and then grew into a fiendish chuckle. It was found to proceed from a neighboring bush, and on proceeding thither the party beheld a sight to make the pious weep. Rolling about in the brush was one of the First Families of Virginia pickets, kicking his heels in the air, and laughing himself right straight into apoplexy.

"O Lord!" says he, going into a fresh convulsion, "take me prisoner and hang me for a rebel, but I never _did_ see such a good one as that air gay old duel. If you'd kept on," says the picket, turning purple in the face, "I really reckon I should a busted myself."

Captain Villiam Brown was greatly scandalized at this unseemly mirth, my boy, and requested the surgeon to cut the picket's head off; but Colonel Wobert Wobinson interposed, and the laughing chap was only made prisoner.

"And now, Villiam," says Captain Bob Shorty, "we've had the satisfaction of gentlemen, and can be friends again. I spurns Miss Muggins. The American flag is my only bride, and as for you!--well, I think rather more of you than I do of my own father."

"Come to my arms!" exclaimed Villiam, falling upon his neck, and improving the opportunity to take the Oath from his canteen.

It was an affecting sight, my boy; and as those two noble youths walked amicably back to the camp together, the fat surgeon remarked to Samyule Sa-mith that they reminded him of Damon and Pythias just returned from the Syracuse Convention.

Yours, for the Code,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.