five
years, it will, of course, be worth $3,250 or five hundred times as
much in five hundred years. Thus, when our population is five hundred
times as great as at present, supposing each man to have a single gold
dollar, the premium of $3,250 on his gold dollar will enable such man
to purchase thirty-two and a half persons of African descent from the
loyal slaveholders of our border States at $100 a piece, though he
would be virtually expending but one dollar himself.

"This scheme of emancipation would certainly make the war shorter than
it now has a prospect of being. In a word, it shows that a dollar will
be much harder to pay for the war than will be a dollar for
emancipation on the proposed plan."

You will observe, my boy, that this same great mathematical idea is
advanced in the Message as it is printed; but our Honest Abe has chosen
to vary the terms somewhat. If you have a gold dollar, my boy, salt it
down for five hundred years, and some future generation of offspring
will call you blessed for leaving them $3,250 in postage-stamps.

On my last journey toward Paris, finding the Mackerel Brigade still
halting before that ancient city, I rode straight to the tent of
Captain Villiam Brown, whom I found making himself a fall overcoat from
some old newspapers, while the Chaplain sat near by, making himself a
pair of shoes from a remnant of calico.

"Well, paladin," says I to Villiam, "what is it that so long detains
our noble army on the path of conquest?"

Villiam sighed as he used a little more paste to fasten the sleeves of
the garment he was constructing, and says he:

"It's the overcoats."

"Why," says I, epigrammatically, "don't they go far enough forward in
front?"

"Ah!" says Villiam, thoughtfully, "they come far enough forward in
front, but then they leave the rear exposed. On Monday," says Villiam,
reflectively, "Company Three's overcoats arrived, and I requested the
warriors to attire themselves after the designs of frequent
fashion-plates. But scarce had their manly forms commenced to assume
the garments, when the garments tore frantically from their warlike
shapes."

"Hum!" says I, questioningly, "the overcoats were Rebels in disguise."

"No," says Villiam, gloomily, "but it took two Mackerels to hold an
overcoat together while another warrior put it on, and when it was
buttoned in front, the rear presented the aspeck of two separate
departments. I am now making myself a stronger coat of