N ORDINARY
CAVALRY DASH.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 22d, 1863.

Greatness of mind, my boy, like greatness of body, consists no less in
a capacity for making good use of small things than in an ability to
master vast ones; and the intellect sublime enough to grasp the whole
system of the universe, may not disdain to draw a useful lesson in
human nature even from so minute an object as the Secretary of the
Interior. The elephant, in the full amplitude of his physical
greatness, has been briefly and comprehensively characterized as an
animal able to knock down a giant and pick up a pin; and how shall the
glorious human mind boast its superiority over matter, if it be not
also endowed with the power of stooping as well as soaring? I believe,
my boy, in the mind that picks up pins intellectual; especially in
these days, when there are so few intellectual giants to knock down.
Indeed, so important to the general system of intellect is the system
of taking no less note of small things than of great ones, that a
multitude of writers who deal only in the smallest kind of matters all
their lives may themselves be denominated intellectual pins. I hold
Mr. Tupper to be an intellectual pin, and Mr. Willis has also become
somewhat of a pin in these his later years.

To the youthful soul, still steeped in those romantic dreams, of which
a supper of pig's feet is the best artificial provocative I know, this
war is a vast phantasmagoria of almighty giants struggling together in
the clouds. There was a time when I, too, was able to see it to that
extent; but time, and some experience in Virginia, have reduced my
giants in the clouds to brigadiers in the mud; and from seeing our
national banner in the character of a rainbow dipped in stars, I have
come to regard it as an ambitious attempt to represent sunrise in
muslin, the unexpected scantiness of the material compelling the
ingenious artist to use a section of midnight to fill up.

Down in Accomac, the other day, I overheard a sentimental Mackerel
chap, to whom I had imparted this flagging idea, inflicting it upon
another Mackerel as original; but he was anxious to improve upon the
comparison, and says he:

"Our National Standard is so much like a beautiful sunrise, that I
could almost wish the full idea of an eternal morning could be further
expressed in it by something to represent the dew."

The inferior Mackerel scratched his head, and says he:

"Why, my pay has been du