des, conscious of his private worth and of the glorious
achievements heaped upon his grateful brow by his aged countrymen; and
allow me to call your attention to the fact that General Douglas never
fit the battle of New Orleans. He couldn't have fout that battle,
cause he was dead. Yes, sir, and I can prove it, if you'll have the
patience to turn and look over Horace Greeley's History of the Kansas
Hymn-book War; for there you will find that General Douglas, at the
head of an army of negroes, made a desperate charge on Mason and
Dixon's line, and Horace said he never breathed afterward.

[Hereupon the speaker left in disgust at the ignorance of
his opponent.]

A SERMON FROM THE HARP OF A THOUSAND STRINGS.

Preached before General Rosecrans and Staff.

My Beluved Brethering:

I am a plain and unlarnt preacher, of whom you've no doubt heern on
afore; and I now appear to expound the scripters, and pint out the
narrow way which leads from a vain world to the streets of the
Juroosalum; and my tex which I shall choose for the occasion is
somewhar between the second Chronikills and the last chapter of
Timothy Titus, and when found you will find it in these words: "And
they shall gnaw a file, and flee unto the mountains of Hepsidam, whar
the lion roareth and the whang-doodle mourneth for its first-born."

Now, my beluved brethering, as I have afore told you, I am an
unedicated man, and know nothing about grammar talk and collidge
highfaluting; but I'm a plain, unlarnt preacher of the Gospil, what's
been foreordained, and called to expound the scripters to a dyin'
world, and prepare a perverse generation for the day of wrath; "for
they shall gnaw a file, and flee unto the mountains of Hepsidam, whar
the lion roareth and the whang-doodle mourneth for its first-born."

My beluved brethering, the text says "they shall gnaw a file." It
don't say they _may_, but they _shall_. And now, there's more'n one
kind of file: there's the hand-saw file, rat-tail file, single file,
double file, and profile; but the kind of file spoken of here isn't
one of them kind neither, because it's a figger of speech, my
brethering, and means goin' it alone, getting ukered; "for they shall
gnaw a file, and flee unto the mountains of Hepsidam, whar the lion
roareth and the whang-doodle mourneth for its first-born."

And now, there be some here with fine clothes on thar backs, brass
rings on thar fingers, and lard on thar har, what