LETTER CVII.

RECORDING THE LATEST DELPHIC UTTERANCES OF ONE WHOM WE ALL HONOR
WITHOUT KNOWING WHY; AND RECOUNTING THE TRULY MARVELLOUS AFFAIR OF
THE FORT BUILT ACCORDING TO TACITUS.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 29th, 1865.

It is a beautiful trait of our common American nature, my boy, that we
should be stood-upon by fleshy Old Age, and find ourselves reduced to
the mental condition of mangled infants thereby. It is an airy
characteristic of our gentle national temperament, to let
shirt-collared Old Age, of much alpaca pants, sit down on us and cough
into our ears. It is a part of our social organization as a reverential
people to be forever weighed-down in our spirits by the awful
respectability of double-chinned Old Age, and the solemn satisfaction
it displays at its elephantine meals.

Hence, my boy, when I tell you that the Venerable Gammon beamed hither
from his residential Mugville last Saturday, with a view to benefiting
that wayward infant, his country, you will be prepared to learn that
the populace fell upon their unworthy stomachs before him, and
respectfully begged him to walk over their necks.

"My children," said the Venerable Gammon, with a fleshy smile,
signifying that he had made them all, and yet didn't wish to seem
proud,--"My children, this war is progressing just as I originally
planned it, and will end successfully as soon as it terminates
triumphantly. Behold my old friend, Phoebus," says the Venerable
Gammon, pointing an adipose forefinger at the sun, with a patriarchal
air of having benignantly invented that luminary, though benevolently
permitting Providence to have all the credit, "it is not more certain
that my warm-hearted friend Phoebus will rise in the yeast to-morrow
morning than that the Southern Confederacy will not be capable of
fighting a single additional battle after it shall have lost the
ability to take part in another engagement."

Then the entire populace requested immediate leave to black the boots
of their aged benefactor and idol, and seven-and-thirty indefatigable
reporters, with pencils behind their ears, telegraphed to
seven-and-thirty powerful morning journals, that the end of the
rebellion might be looked for in about a couple of hours.

I don't mind revealing to you, as a curious fact, my boy, that no
mortal man is able to understand how the Venerable Gammon has done
anything at all in this war. In fact, I can't exactly perceive what
earthly deed he