o had
followed our troops were organizing a Republican caucus in the bar-room
of the captured capital, the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade pushed on
after the unseemly Confederacies, with a view to further carnage. Not a
stump of a tree was seen but it was at once taken for Mr. Davis
himself, and had the direful Orange County Howitzers concentrated upon
it; yet such dangers did not deter our venerable Mackerel boys from
their assigned pursuit, and ere long their glittering spectacles
surrounded a goodly swamp, wherein were perceptible the caitiff
Confederacies up to their chins in the sacred soil. With only their
heads above the mud, these sons of chivalry looked not unlike a vast
cabbage-patch romantically viewed by twilight; while far up the
vegetable vista glowed the eyes of Captain Munchausen, like those of an
irascible Thomas cat who sees a dog down the lane.

Pitching his tent in a spot where no vagrant stone could reach it, the
General of the Mackerel Brigade took off his coat and vest, rolled up
the legs of his inexpressibles, and commenced the following

CORRESPONDENCE.

MUNCHAUSEN, _Southern Confederacy_:

"SIR,--The result of the last strategical combat between us must
convince you of the hopelessness of further military confusion in
this country. I feel that it is so, and consider it my duty to
shift from myself the responsibility of further carnage by asking
of you the surrender of that portion of the sunny South known as
the Southern Confederacy.

"THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.

("Green Seal.")

You may observe, my boy, that the remark: "I feel that it is so," does
not make the strongest kind of connection with the preceding sentence;
but great warriors are apt to be shaky in their rhetoric; and the
Confederacy responded thus:

"GEN. MACK. BRIG.:

"SIRRAH,--Though repelling with scorn the vandal insinuation that
further military confusion on my part is hopeless, I agree with you
as to the stoppage of further carnage, and desire to know upon what
terms you will haul the celebrated Southern Confederacy out of this
swamp.

"MUNCHAUSEN X his mark."

(This chivalrous manner of signing a name with a Cross is a knightly
expression of profound piety, descended from the ancient crusaders to
the Southern chivalry of the present day.)

To the above epistle the General thus replied:

"MUNCHAUSEN, _Southern Confederacy_: