Washington, D.C., February 16th, 1862.
There is still much lingual gymnastics, my boy, concerning the recent fête sham-pate at the White House; but Colonel Wobert Wobinson, of the Western Cavalry, has extinguished the grumblers by proving that the entertainment was strictly Constitutional. He profoundly observes, my boy, that it comes under the head of that clause of the Constitution which secures to the people of America the "pursuit of happiness;" and, as he justly remarks, if you stop the "pursuit of happiness," where's the Instrument of our Liberties?
It pleases me greatly to announce, my boy, that the General of the Mackerel Brigade believes in McClellan, and gorgeously defends him against the attacks of that portion of the depraved press which has friends dying of old age in the Army of the Potomac.
"Thunder!" says he to Captain Bob Shorty, stirring the Oath in his tumbler with a tooth-brush—"the way Little Mac is devoting himself to the military squelching of this here unnatural rebellion, is actually outraging his physical nature. He reviews his staff twice a day, goes over the river every five minutes, studies international law six hours before dinner, takes soundings of the mud every time the dew falls, and takes so little sleep, that there's two inches of dust on one of his eye-balls. Would you believe it," says the General, placing the tumbler over his nose to keep off a fly, "his devotion is such that his hair is turning gray and will probably dye!"
Captain Bob Shorty whistled. I do not mean to say that he intended to be musically satirical, my boy; but if I should hear such a canary-bird remark after I'd told a story, somebody would go home with his eyes done up in rainbows.
"Permit me," says Captain Bob Shorty, hurling what remained of the Oath into the aperture under his moustache. "You convince me that Little Mac's devotion is extraordinary," continued Captain Bob Shorty, dreamily; "but he don't come up to a chap I once knew, which was a editor. Talk about devotion! and outraging nature!" says Captain Bob Shorty, spitting with exquisite accuracy into the eyes of the regimental cat, "why, that ere editor threw body, soul, and breeches into his work; and so completely identified himself with a free and enlightened press, that his first child was a newsboy."
The General of the Mackerel Brigade arose from his seat, my boy, wound up his watch, brushed off his boots, threw the cat out of the window, and then says he:
"Robert, name of Shorty, did you ever read in the Bible about Ananias, who was struck dead for telling a telegraph?"
"I heard about him," says Captain Bob Shorty, "when I was but a innocent lamb, and wore my mother's slipper on my back about as often as she wore it on her foot."
"Well," says the general, with the air of a thoughtful parent, "it's my opinion that if you'd been Ananias, the same streak of lightning would have buried you and paid the sexton."