l lines in front of Paris.

Believing that you are entirely familiar with the very fat works of C.
Tacitus, and minutely remember Book II. of his Annals, let me draw your
attention to that fort Aliso which he describes as being built upon the
River Luppia by Drusus, father of Germanicus, and constituting the
commencement of a chain of posts to the Rhine. Just such a work has
been erected on the shores of Duck Lake by Mackerel genius, as the key
to a long line of remarkable mud-works. It is modelled after Aliso,
chiefly because that work was notorious for being near the Canal of
Drusus; and the whole world knows that canal-digging is inseparable
from all our national strategy.

Fort Bledandide is the name of the Mackerel institution destined to
receive immortality in Mr. Tacitus Greeley's exciting History of this
distracting war; but to me belongs the earlier privilege of enabling a
moral weekly journal to confuse its readers with the first reliable
report of the marvellous battle of Fort Bledandide.

It was at quite an early hour, my boy, on the morning of my arrival
before Paris, that a faint sound, as of gentlemen firing guns, was
heard to proceed from a point some six feet outside Fort Bledandide.
Nobody was up at the time, save a few venerable Mackerels, who, in
daily expectation of some carnage, had selected that hour at which to
write their wills; and it was left for these antique beings to be the
first of our troops disturbed by a shameless Confederacy who lifted his
head slowly above our works, and deliberately aimed a deadly
horse-pistol at Jacob Barker, the regimental dog. Hideous was the
explosion ensuing, as the night-key with which the dread weapon was
loaded went hurtling through the air some ten yards above its mark; and
an aged Mackerel looked up from his penmanship.

"What!" says he, with some animation, "are my spectacles guilty of a
falsehood, or have I indeed the pleasure of seeing Mr. Davis?"

The Confederacy reloaded his horse-pistol with a handful of
carpet-tacks, and says he:

"I am that individdle."

Raising a bell that stood by his side, the venerable Mackerel rang a
hasty peal, which had the effect to arouse two or three of the other
scribes from their writing, and cause them to apply ear-trumpets to
their ears. Simultaneously the first warrior roared, through a
fire-trumpet:

"Comrades! We are surprised."

At the same instant the Confederacy burst into a tempest of unseemly
chuckl