Chapter XXIV: Letter LXVII

GIVING ASSURANCE OF THE UNMITIGATED SAFETY OF THE CAPITAL,
EXEMPLIFYING COLONEL WOBINSON's DRAFTING EXPERIENCE, AND
NARRATING A GREAT METAPHYSICAL VICTORY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., September 5th, 1862.

Everything is confident and buoyant here, my boy, a sense that the President is an honest man, inspiring confidence on every side, and surrounding the Government with well-known confidence men. The repeated safety of the Capital, indeed, has even inspired the genius of New England, as illustrated by a thoughtful Boston chap, with one of those enlarged business ideas which will yet enable that section to betrade the whole world. The thoughtful Boston chap has read all the war-news, my boy, for the last six months, and as he happens to be a moral manufacturer of burglar-proof safes, a happy pecuniary thought struck him forcibly. After joining the church, to make sure of his morality here, he came hither in haste, opened an establishment, read the war-news once more, and then issued the following enterprising card:

BUY THE CELEBRATED
WASHINGTON SAFE!

Everybody thought it was the safe they'd read so much about in the papers, my boy, and several hundreds were sold.

There was another chap, named Burns, the inventor of a Family and Military Gridiron, who noticed how the thoughtful Boston chap was making money by the advertising necessities of our distracted country. Having been born in Connecticut at a very early age, my boy, he was not long in finding a way to make his own eternal fortune, after the same meritorious manner. So he at once repaired to a liquor shop, to make sure that a majority of our staff-officers would hear him, and then, says he, in stentorian tones:

"My sympathies are all with the Southern Confederacy, to whom I send the weekly journals of romance on the day of publication. As to the Union," says the Connecticut chap, hotly, "I have less confidence in it than I have in my Patent Economical Family and Military Gridiron."

He was immediately arrested for this seditious talk, my boy, and all the reporters telegraphed an exciting dispatch to the reliable morning journals:

"_Exciting Affair--Arrest of an Influential Rebel!_--The celebrated Mr. Burns has been arrested for publicly saying that he had more confidence in his well-known and ingenious patent Economical Family and Military Gridiron than he had in the Union. Upon hearing of his incarceration, the most sanguine rebel sympathizers here admitted that the cause of the South was lost forever."

The Connecticut chap remained in custody until he had received four hundred orders for gridirons, from private families and army-chaplains, and then he explained that the words he had used were uttered in the heat of passion, and he was, of course, honorably discharged from prison, to make way for a shameless, aged miscreant just committed for two years' hard labor, on suspicion of having discouraged enlistments by asserting that, although he was too old to go to the war himself, he intended to send a substitute.

Simultaneously, all the reporters telegraphed again to the reliable morning journals:

"_The Burns Affair Settled!--Full Particulars of the Gridiron!_--Mr. Burns, the celebrated inventor of the famous Patent Gridiron, has been honorably discharged by order of the Secretary of War. His inimitable Gridiron is destined to have an immense sale.

"It cooks a beafsteak in such a manner that the appetite is fully satisfied from merely looking at it, and the same steak will do for breakfast next morning. This is a great saving. Persons having nothing to eat find this Gridiron a great comfort, and hence the propriety of introducing it in the army."

The Gridirons are having a great sale, my boy, and it is believed that the business interests of the country are being rapidly improved by the war.

Knowing that the Mackerel Brigade was making preparations to entrap the Southern Confederacy at Molasses Junction, I ascended to the upper gallery of my architectural steed, Pegasus, on Tuesday, in order that I might not be unduly hurried on my journey. Taking Accomac on my way to the battle-field, my boy, I called upon Colonel Wobert Wobinson, who is superintending preparations for the draft there, and was witness to an incident suitable to be recorded in profane history.

The draft in Accomac, my boy, is positively to take place on the 11th of September; but it is not believed that the enrollment can be finished before the 15th; in which case, the draft must inevitably take place on the 20th. In fact, the Judge-Advocate of the Accomac states positively that the conscription will commence on the 1st of October; and volunteering is so brisk that no draft may be required. At least, such is the report of those best acquainted with the more decisive plans of the War Department, which thinks of joining the Temperance Society.

The exempts were filing their papers of exemption with Colonel Wobert Wobinson, my boy, and amongst them was one chap with a swelled eye, a deranged neck-tie, and a hat that looked as though it might have been used as an elephant's foot-bath. The chap came in with a heavy walk, and says he:

"Being a married man, war has no terror for me; but I am obliged to exempt myself from military affairs on account of the cataract in my eyes."

Colonel Wobert Wobinson looked at him sympathizingly, and says he: "You might possibly do for a major-general, my son, as it is blindness principally that characterises a majority of our present major-generals in the field; but fearing that your absence from home might cause a prostration in the liquor business, I will accept your cataract as valid."

The poor chap sighed until he reached the first hiccup, and then says he: "I wish I could cure this here cataract, which causes my eyes to weep in the absence of all woe."

"Do your orbs liquidate so freely?" says the Colonel, with the air of a family physician.

"Yes," says the poor chap, gloomily, "they are like two continual mill streams."

"Mill streams!" says Colonel Wobinson meditatively, "mill streams! Why, then, you'd better dam your eyes."

"I think, my boy, I say I _think_, that this kindly advice of Colonel Wobert Wobinson's must have been misunderstood in some way; for an instant departure of several piously-inclined recruits took place precipitately, and the poor chap chuckled like a fiend.

It is the great misfortune of our mother tongue, my boy, that words of widely-different meanings have precisely the same sound, and in using one you seem to be abusing another.

Arriving near the celebrated Molasses Junction, where a number of Mackerels were placing a number of new cars and locomotives on the track--the object being to delude the Southern Confederacy into taking a ride in them, when, it was believed, the aforesaid Confederacy would speedily be destroyed by one of those "frightful accidents" without which a day on any American railroad would be a perfect anomaly--arriving there, I say, I took an immediate survey of the appointed field of strife.

To the inexperienced civilian eye, my boy, everything appeared to be in a state of chaotic confusion, which nothing but the military genius of our generals could make much worse. On all sides, my boy, I beheld the Mackerel chaps marching and countermarching; falling back, retiring, retreating, and making retrograde movements. Some were looking for their regiments; some were insanely looking for their officers, as though they did not know that the latter have resided permanently in Washington ever since the war commenced; some were making calls on others, and here and there might be seen squads of Confederates picking up any little thing they might happen to find.

Finding the general of the Mackerel Brigade lunching upon a bottle and tumbler near me, I saluted him, and says I:

"Tell me, my veteran, how it is that you permit the Southern Confederacy to meander thus within your lines?"

The general looked toleratingly at me, and says he;

"I have a plan to entrap the Confederacy, and end this doomed rebellion at one stroke. Do you mark that long train of army wagons down there near my quarters?"

"Yes," says I, nervously.

"Well, then, my nice little boy," says the general, cautiously, "I'll tell you what the plan is. These wagons contain the rations of our troops. It is my purpose to induce the celebrated Confederacy to capture these wagons and attempt to eat those rations. If the Confederacy will only do that," says the general, fiercely, "it will be taken sick on the spot, and we shall capture it alive."

I could not but feel shocked at this inhuman artifice, my boy. The Southerners have indeed acted in away to forfeit all ordinary mercy, but still, we should abstain from any retaliatory act savoring of demoniac malignity. Our foes are at least human beings.

Suppressing my horror, however, I assumed a practical aspect, and says I:

"But how are the Mackerel warriors to subsist, my Napoleon, if you allow the rations to go?"

"Thunder!" says the general, handing me a paper from his pocket. "They are to subsist exclusively on the enemy. Just peruse this document, which I have just fulminated."

Taking the paper, I found it to be the following

PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, The matter of provisions is a great expense to the United States of America, besides offering inducements for unexpected raids on the part of the famishing foeman; the Mackerel Brigade is hereby directed to live entirely upon the Southern Confederacy, eating him alive wherever found, and partaking of no other food.

The Brigade will not be permitted to take any clothing with it on the march, being required henceforth to dress exclusively in the habiliments of captured Confederacies.

We have done with retrograde movements. No more lines of retreat will be kept open, and henceforth the Mackerel Brigade is to make nothing but great captures.

By order of
THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.
[Green Seal.]

This able document, my boy, pleased me greatly as an evidence that the war had indeed commenced in earnest; and though at that moment, I beheld some half a dozen Confederacies ransacking the tent where the general kept his mortgages, his bank account, and other Government property, I felt that our foes were about to be summarily dealt with at last.

An orderly having finally given notice to the Confederacies rummaging within our lines to get to their proper places, in order that the battle might begin, the Anatomical Cavalry, under Captain Samyule Sa-mith, made a headlong charge upon a body of foes who were destroying a bridge near the middle of the field, and succeeded in obliging them to remain there. This brilliant movement was the signal for a general engagement, and a regiment of Confederacies at once advanced within our lines and inquired the way to Washington.

Having given them the desired information, and allowed a number of other similar regiments to take a position between the Mackerels and the capital, the general gave orders for the Conic Section and the Orange County Howitzers to fall cautiously back, in order that the remaining Confederacies might get between us and Richmond.

You will perceive that by this movement, my boy, we cut the enemy's force completely in two, thus compelling him to attack us either in the front or in the rear, and giving him no choice of any other operation save flank movements. Our plans being thus perfected, Captain Villiam Brown, with Company 3, Regiment 5, was ordered to charge into a wood near at hand, with a view to induce some recently-arrived reserve Confederacies to take position in our centre, while still others would be likely to flank us on the right and left.

You may remember, my boy, that it has heretofore been our misfortune to fight on the circumference of a circle, while the Confederacy had the inside, and this great strategic scheme was intended to produce a result _vice versa_.

It was a great success, my boy--a great success; and our troops presently found themselves inside the most complete circle on record. Villiam Brown not only charged into the wood, but staid there; and when one of the Orange County Howitzers was discharged with great precision at a reporter who was caught sneaking into our lines, the report was heard by the Venerable Gammon at Washington, causing that revered man to telegraph to all the papers, that no one need feel alarmed, as he was perfectly safe, and that our victory was very complete.

What particular danger the Venerable Gammon had incurred, I can't say, my boy; nor what he knew about the battle; but his dispatch caused renewed confidence all over the country, and was a great comfort to his friends.

Having got the Confederacies just where he wanted them, the General of the Mackerel Brigade now dispatched ten veterans under Sergeant O'Pake to attack a few hundred foes who had intrenched themselves in an unseemly manner right among our wagons. The Mackerels were well received as prisoners of war, and paroled on the spot; a proceeding which so greatly pleased the idolized general, that he at once issued this second

PROCLAMATION.

It must be understood, that in his recent proclamation directing the Mackerel Brigade to dine exclusively upon Southern Confederacies, the general commanding did not intend that such dining should take place without the free consent of aforesaid Confederacies.

It must not be understood that the order concerning the confiscation of Confederate garments is intended to authorize a forcible confiscation of such costume, in opposition to the free will of the wearers.

By "no lines of retreat being kept open," is meant: no lines of which the general commanding was at that time cognizant.

THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.

This admirable order, my boy, produced great enthusiasm in the ranks, as no Confederacies had yet been caught, and there was some danger of starvation in the _corps_.

And now, my boy, occurred that magnificent piece of generalship which is destined to live forever on the annals of fame, and convince the world that our military leaders possess a genius eminently fitting every one of them for the next Presidency, or any other peaceful office. By skillful manoeuvring, the gifted General of the Mackerel Brigade had succeeded in cutting the enemy's force to pieces, the pieces being mixed up with our own army. Then came the words: "Forward, double-quick!"

Facing toward Washington, our vanguard forced the Confederacies before them to move right ahead. Swiftly following the vanguard, and evidently fancying that it was flying before them, came a regiment of Confederacies. Pursuing the latter, as though in triumph, appeared the Conic Section, Mackerel Brigade; closely succeeded in its turn by a regiment of Confederacies in charge of our baggage-wagons; racing after whom was a regiment of Mackerels; and so on to the end of the line.

You may ask me, my boy, with which side rested the victory in this remarkable movement?

That question, my boy, cannot be decided yet, as the whole procession has scarcely reached Washington; but the answer may be said to depend very much upon whether the last regiment coming in is Mackerel or Confederate.

The contest, my boy, has assumed a profound metaphysical aspect, and the development of a little more military genius on our own side will tend to utterly confound our enemies and--everybody else.

Yours, ponderingly,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.