he county maps. General John Smith, the latest edition of
Mackerel Commander, gave leadership of his advance guard to Captain
Villiam Brown, and immediately five-and-twenty inflamed reporters
frantically telegraphed to as many excellent and reliable morning
journals, that all the thieving Confederacies were about to be bagged,
and that all the revolting details would be given in our next issue. It
was toward evening, my boy, when Captain Villiam Brown, mounted upon
his geometrical steed, Euclid, came riding up to the advanced
head-quarters of the new general to report results.

"Well, young man," says the General, with Spartan equanimity, "have we
bagged the enemies of human freedom?"

Villiam looked up from the demijohn under the table, upon which he had
been earnestly gazing, and says he, "No, sire; but the very next thing
to bagging them has occurred."

"Relate the tale," says the General, with dignity.

"Why," says Villiam, "instead of our bagging them, they have been
sacking us."

It is a remarkable and beautiful peculiarity of our flexible language,
my boy, that its semi-syno-nymical effects permit the transmission of
trying intelligence in terms of soothing similarity to those which
might have been employed had the news been more felicitous. Thus are we
let down easily from pride to humiliation, and spared much intervening
agony of soul.

So the Mackerel Brigade turned their gleaming old spectacles once more
in the direction of our National Capital, and are again a
characteristic of the landscape enclosing Washington. Further
consummate strategy is postponed for a time on account of the weather,
which has become villanously hot through the fanatical machinations of
the insidious Black Republicans. Thus are Greeley, Beecher, Wendell
Phillips, and their deluded followers weakening the military arm of the
government and endeavoring to obtain fat contracts for worthless fans!

Methinks I hear you ask, "Has the new general of the Mackerel Brigade
made a failure, after all the credit the public have given him for
superiority over his predecessors?"

Far be it from me to judge hastily, but I may be permitted to say, my
boy,--I may be permitted to say, that men in the military line have
this point in common with men in a mercantile business; by obtaining
too much on credit at the start, they are very apt to make bad
failures, leaving nothing but their lie-abilities for the consolation
of those who trusted them.