relieving a bloated aristocracy of
their watches and loose change, ransacking sundry private residences on
account of the great draft of their chimneys, and performing other
awe-inspiring acts of rude majesty, equally well calculated to evince a
freeborn people's distaste for despotism. Furthermore, the Sovereign
People fearlessly attacked a large and aristocratic Hospital, beating
many of the patients to death; for, by some corrupt chicanery, these
patients were barefacedly exempted from the Conscription which bore so
heavily upon the down-trodden and healthy poor man. The "Evening Cat,"
in a special edition, was genial enough to express a hope that "the
outraged people now muttering ominously in the air," would not burst
upon the office and editor of the "Morning Dog" with _too_ much just
fury; whereupon the incensed Sovereign People said that, be jabers,
they'd come mighty near forgetting that entirely; and forthwith
proceeded to stone the office of the "Dog" until the hasty discharge of
an ink-stand from one of the upper windows thereof induced them to make
a hasty change of base.

Without indulging in farther details, suffice it to say that the
Sovereign People finally desisted from their struggle for liberty upon
being satisfied that no more watches, purses, nor sick despots were to
be got at conveniently, and the "Evening Cat" came out in a spirited
article in favor of an immediate war with France.

How grateful should it be to our national pride, my boy, that even the
stranger that is within our gates feels inspired by the very atmosphere
with a jealous, a fighting love for perfect freedom,--especially if
said gates be those of a State prison.

Yours, exuberantly,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER XCVIII.

RECOUNTING A CHASTE "RECONSTRUCTION" ANECDOTE OF THE SIXTH WARD,
AND DIVULGING CAPTAIN VILLIAM BROWN'S INGENIOUS ALPHABETICAL
EXPERIMENT WITH COMPANY THREE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 25th, 1863.

It is a high-moral idea of poets, congressmen, and the writers for our
improving weekly journals of exciting romance, my boy, that it is a
noble and majestic thing to feel warmly for one's country; but when the
thermometer stands at 90 in the shade, and we join with our
fellow-beings in shedding tears from the tops of our foreheads, I find
my disinterested patriotism fully equal to the self-abnegation of the
remark, that I had rather be cool than be President. Our brethren are
already in the fiel