his feet impatiently--looked toward his nearest
comrade--and then seated himself with his back toward the Confederacy.
Still the latter gnawed and looked longingly. The Mackerel said,
"damme!" quite distinctly and stoutly, and vigorously grasped at a
"drumstick" again. He gave it a twist, paused, wavered, and _looked
over his shoulder_.

In another instant, my boy, that Mackerel sprang to his feet, faced
about, shouted:

"I'll do it, by G--d! if I swing for it"--dashed across the field like
a stark madman, and, before the astonished Confederacy could budge an
inch, had hurled the turkey into his arms and was tearing back to his
own post.

There is a chivalry, my boy, that makes a man a hero with the sword of
a patriot, or bears him triumphantly through perils and obstacles to
the arms of the bride he has won. There is a chivalry that inspires a
man to spurn with contempt the fortune not fraught with all honor, and
gives him the graces of a gentleman through all the glooms and burdens
of honest poverty. But in that grander Chivalry native to the soul,
which raises the tenderness of our best humanity far above the highest
point all enmity can reach, and lets it fall, like God's own dew, upon
the other side, none, none more fairly ever won a knighthood, than that
poor Mackerel picket-guard on last Thanksgiving Day.

Yours, gently,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER CII.

SHOWING THE INGENIOUS FINANCIAL ENERGY OF A GREATLY-REDUCED
POLITICIAN; AND DESCRIBING A COMBAT, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENTMENT OF THE WELL-KNOWN SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY
UNDER ALL REVERSES.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 17th, 1864.

It is a sublime thing, my boy,--a high moral and exciting thing,--to
note a wealthy nation's outburst of gratitude to Providence and our
national military organization, for a succession of Mackerel triumphs
without parallel either in history or her story. As I look abroad upon
the exulting hosts of our distracted fellow-countrymen from an upper
front window of Willard's,--having first wafted a fascinating salute to
the pleasing young woman of much back hair at a window across the
avenue,--as I look abroad, my boy, upon this whole remarkable people, I
am deeply impressed with a sense of that beautiful, national
characteristic which makes us all buoyant over Mackerel victories only
as they bring us nearer to virtuous peace and universal brotherhood,
and am convinced that our otherwise inexpressib