"'Here shall the Press the People's rights maintain,
Unawed by affluence and inspired by gain.'
"I'm the best advertising medium in the country, and have reptile cotemporaries. I won't be suppressed. No, sir!—no, sir!—I refuse to be suppressed."
"You're a giant intellek," says Villiam, looking at him through the bottom of a tumbler; "but I can't stand the press. Speaker of the House, remove him to the bath and send for a barber. Now, gentlemen, I will say a few words to the troops, and then we will march according to Hardee."
The section of the Mackerel Brigade being mustered in line against a rail fence, my boy, Captain Villiam Brown shut one eye, balanced himself on one foot, and thus addressed them.
"Fellow-Soldats! (which is French.) It was originally intended to present you with a stand of colors; but the fellow-citizen who was to present it has only got as far as the hundred and fifty-second page of the few remarks he intended to make on the occasion, and it is a military necessity not to wait for him. (See Scott's Tactics, Vol. III., pp. 24.) I have but few words to say, and these are them: Should any of you happen to be killed in the coming battle, let me implore you to Die without a groan. It sounds better in history, as well as in the great, heart-stirring romances of the weekly palladiums of freedom. How well it reads, that 'Private Muggins received a shot in the neck and died without a groan.' Soldats! bullets have been known to pass clean through the thickest trees, and so I may be shot myself. Should such a calamity befall our distracted country, I shall die without a groan, even though I am a grown person. Therefore, fear nothing. The eyes of the whole civilized world are upon you, and History and Domestic Romance expect to write that you died without a groan."
At the conclusion of this touching and appropriate speech, my boy, all the men exclaimed: "We will!" except a young person from New York, who said that he'd rather "Groan without a die;" for which he was sentenced to read Seward's next letter.
The Army being formed into a Great Quadrilateral (See Raymond's Tactics), moved forward at a double-quick, and reached Accomac just as the impatient sun was rushing down. With the exception of a mule, the only Virginian to be seen was a solitary Chivalry, who had strained himself trying to raise some interest from a Confederate Treasury Note, and couldn't get away.
Observing that only one man was in sight, Captain Villiam Brown, who had stopped to tie his shoe behind a large tree on the left, made a flank movement on the Chivalry.
"Is these the borders of Accomac?" says he, pleasantly.