love your country! Russia
will never join any scheme of foreign intervention against your
beautiful fish."

He said this in such a tone of real fondness that tears sprang to my
eyes, and says I:

"Heaven bless you, my Muscovy duck!"

"With a look of the deepest tenderness, Mr. Gorchakoff now extended
himself at full length upon the top of a bureau near my chair, and
allowed his head to hang over in such a manner that he was enabled to
press his cheek against mine.

"Wilt thou do me one favor, noble youth?" says he, with much emotion.

I placed a hand upon my heart.

"Then," says he, "just ask Mr. Seward not to write so many letters to
me every week; because when my mail is so large, I don't have any time
to attend to my family."

I promised to do so, and then went out to get some oysters. The candles
had made me quite light-headed.

From this, my boy, you will perceive that Russia "may be counted upon
in an emergency;" as the man said of the bear-skin upon which he was
reckoning his small change.

On Thursday, bright and early, I mounted my gothic steed Pegasus, and
started for Duck Lake.

Upon reaching the Mackerel camp, I found all the spectacled warriors
under arms for a fray, the unaccommodating Confederacies on the other
side of Paris having urged some rifled objections to the construction
of a pontoon bridge across Duck Lake. The chap who was building the
bridge had only just untied his second paper of nails, when a potato
from some Confederate marksman, in the second-story of Paris, hit him
violently in the stomach. Simultaneously the cover of a dinner-pot
cracked his knuckles, and, as he fell back in good order, a brick-bat
tapped him on the head. Believing that hostilities had commenced, the
new General of the Mackerel Brigade hastily put on all his dirty
clothes, and ordered the Orange County Howitzers to commit incendiarism
with Paris, simultaneously directing Rear Admiral Head to moor the
"Secretary Welles" abreast of the nearest Confederacy and shell him
with great slaughter.

Under command of Captain Samyule Sa-mith, the Howitzers were opened
upon Paris, and commenced such a tornado of round shot and grape that
the surrounding landscape was very much defaced. There was much noise,
my boy,--there was much noise.

But the great sight of the hour was the manoeuvring of the iron-plated
Mackerel squadron on the tempestuous waters of Duck Lake. After hastily
making a fire in the stove on the qu