s a new Mackerel Hotel recently erected on the borders of Duck
Lake, near Strategy Hall, for the benefit of Brigadiers who have not
been accustomed to doing without a bar; and it was in one of the rooms
thereof that the Conservative Kentucky Chap recently fell a victim to
the most remarkable optical illusion of this distracted century. He was
sitting with his back to a window, my boy, his head drooped upon his
breast beneath the weight of the Emancipation Proclamation, and, with
arms folded and legs screwed awry on his chair, he was contemplating
the opposite wall from under his Conservative hat.

"Hum," says he, with subdued ecstasy, "How sweet it is to look upon the
map of my native land, of which Kentucky is the guiding star! As I look
upon that simple map," says the conservative Chap, thoughtfully, "and
reflect upon the recent improvements in Kentucky, it becomes a question
in my mind whether Kentucky is the United States, or the United States
is Kentucky."

Following the direction of his eyes as he said this, I beheld upon the
wall opposite where he was sitting:

[Illustration: A CONSERVATIVE KENTUCKY MAP OF ALL AMERICA.]

"Look here, my absorbed Talleyrand," says I, in astonishment, "that's
not a map! It's only your own shadow on the wall."

He moved as I spoke, and then, for the first time, discovered his
illusion.

"Hum!" says he, "it is a map of the Union in the sense that the Union
is but a shadow of its former self."

The Conservative Kentucky Chap is actually so insufferably egotistical,
my boy, and so imbued with the idea that Kentucky is the whole country,
that it is almost impossible for him to sit on a chair without throwing
his body into almost the exact shape of the American Continent.

Having induced a small Mackerel drummer to bring me my chaste
architectual steed, the Gothic Pegasus, I mounted the roof of that
walking country church, and moved off in an organ-waltz to inspect the
national troops.

The Mackerel Brigade grows hoary with antiquity, and the capture of the
Southern Confederacy is still delayed for the want of pontoons. And
this reminds me that the Abolitionists of New England, who are entirely
responsible for this war, with its taxes upon members of the Democratic
Organization, have not yet sent any pontoons to the field. Whilst they
would abridge the rights of white men, they even ignore white men's
rights to a bridge. But let us not linger over such depravity, or we
shall be