The Guards paid me a delicate compliment at their last meeting: elected me Child of the Regiment, with the rank of a First Corpulent. I was about to return thanks in a neat speech, when they told me it was no use; that a reporter, who was present, had got the whole thing in type—speech and all—and I could read it in the evening paper. I got his views, and held my own.
Yours for the Union, including the Stars, also the Stripes.
Fat Contributor.
"What are you going to do, you bad woman's boy?" said Mrs. Wiggles, as her youngest son passed through the kitchen into the garden.
"Down with the Seceshers!" he shouted; and she looked out just in time to see the top of a rose-bush fall before the artillery-sword of her son, that the youngster held in his hand.
"You had better go to Molasses Jugtion, if you want to do that," she said, restraining his hand as 't was lifted against a favorite fuschia, that she had trained with so much care.
"Dear me!" she murmured, half to herself; "what a terrible thing war is, when children show signs of such terrible consanguinity!"
The Negro on the Fence.
"Hearken to what I now relate,
And on its moral meditate."
A Wagoner, with grist for mill,
Was stalled at bottom of a hill.
A brawny negro passed that way,
So stout he might a lion slay.
"I'll put my shoulder to the wheels,
If you'll bestir your horse's heels."
So said the African, and made
As if to render timely aid.
"No," cried the wagoner, "stand back!
I'll take no help from one that's black;"
And, to the negro's great surprise,
Flourished his whip before his eyes.
Our "darkey" quick "skedaddled" thence,
And sat upon the wayside fence.
Then went the wagoner to work,
And lashed his horses to a jerk;
But all his efforts were in vain;
With shout, and oath, and whip, and rein,
The wheels budged not a single inch,
And tighter grow the wagoner's pinch.
Directly there came by a child,
With toiling step, and vision wild,
"Father," said she, with hunger dread,
"We famish for the want of bread."
Then spake the negro: "If you will,
I'll help your horses to the mill."
The wagoner, in grievous plight,
Now swore and raved with all his might,
Because the negro wasn't white;
And plainly ordered him to go
To a certain place, that's down below;
Then, rushing, came the wagoner's wife,
To save her own and infant's life;
By robbers was their homestead sacked,
And smoke and blood their pillage tracked.