ank the unseemly Confederacies defending Paris,
the main body of the venerable brigade, under Captain Villiam Brown and
Captain Bob Shorty, commenced strategical designs on that city.

Thus early in the engagement a bloodthirsty Confederacy had succeeded
in training a fowling-piece from behind a chimney on the roof of Paris,
greatly worrying our troops with dried beans, and the Orange County
Howitzers were already concentrated upon him with a view to cutting off
his legs; when there suddenly appeared within our lines a maiden,
stricken in years, with a white plush bonnet, a green silk umbrella,
and the ninety-ninth number of the History of this War under one arm.
She waved a hand toward the Mackerels nearest her, and says she:

"On, to Paris! On, to Paris! or a decimated and indignant country,
acting on the predictions in the ninety-ninth number of the most
accurate History of the War now sold to subscribers only, will
indignantly demand that EVERYBODY be at once removed!"

Here the General of the Mackerel Brigade made his appearance from the
rear, and says he:

"What do you desire, Miss P. Hen?"

"On, to Paris!" shrieked the maiden. "On, to the capital of the
brutalized dealers in human flesh and blood, and drag them to the
scaffold!" Here Miss P. Hen drew a long breath, and says she, "Let's
have no vacillating."

"All right, Mamsell," says the General.

"And the country'd have more confidence in _you_," says Miss P. Hen,
vigorously, "if you'd stop chewing that nasty tobacco, which is only
fit for brutes and dealers in human flesh and blood. On, to Paris!
or"--

At this juncture, my boy, the aged Miriam caught sight of the
Conservative Kentucky Chap, haranguing against her down the Accomac
road, and toddled furiously away to chastise him with her umbrella.

Meanwhile, the Orange County Howitzers had sent some pounds of shrapnel
in the direction of the hostile Confederacy on the roof; and as the
bricks began to fly from the chimney, and the dried beans came at
longer intervals, Regiment 5 of the Mackerel Brigade moved nearer to
the beleaguered capital, and opened an effective fire of musketry upon
the azure zenith. Captain Villiam Brown was about to order an assault,
when certain windows in the upper stories of Paris were thrown up, and
there rained therefrom such a hurtling tempest of stew-pans,
hearth-brushes, shaving-cups, and boxes of blacking, that hundreds of
Mackerel spectacles were broken. Simultaneou