But the dignified chap only shut down the window and went to bed again, saying his prayers backwards. I would not accuse a noble Department of violence, my boy, but in about three minutes there was a double back-action machine standing in that chap's front entry, with three-inch streams out of all the back windows. The fire was put out with only half a hose company killed and wounded, and next day there was a meeting to see what should be done with the incendiary when he was caught. The high moral chap was at that meeting very early, and says he:
"Let me advise moderation in this here unhappy matter. I feel deeply interested," says the chap, with tears; "for I assisted to put out the conflagration by permitting the use of my house by the firemen. I almost feel," says the genial chap, "like a fellow fireman myself."
At this crisis, a chap who was assistant engineer, and also Secretary to the Board of Education, arose, and says he:
"What are yer coughin' about, old peg-top? Didn't me and the fellers have to cave in your door with a night-key wrench—sa-a-ay? What are yer gassin' about, then? You did a muchness—you did! Yes—slightually—in a horn. Now," says the gallant fireman, with an agreeable smile, "if you don't jest coil in yer hose and take the sidewalk very sudden, it'll be my duty, as a member of the Department, to bust yer eye."
I commend this chaste and rhetorical remark, my boy, to the attention of Border State Conswervatives.
Since the occupation of Paris by the Mackerel Brigade, affairs there have been administered with great intellectual ability by Captain Villiam Brown, who has been appointed Provisional Governor, to govern the sale of provisions.
The city of Paris, my boy, as I told you lately, is laid out in one house at present; and since the discovery, that what were at first supposed to be Dahlgren guns by our forces were really a number of old hats with their rims cut off, laid in a row on top of the earthworks, the democracy have stopped talking about the General of the Mackerel Brigade for next President.
The one house, however, was a boarding-house; and though all the boarders left at the approach of our troops, it was subsequently discovered that all of them save one, were good Union men, and were brutally forced to fly by that one Confederate miscreant. When Villiam heard of the fate of these noble and oppressed patriots, my boy, he suffered a tear to drop into the tumbler he had just found, and says he:
"Just Hevings! can this be so? Ah!" says Villiam, lifting a bottle near by to see that no rebel was concealed under it, "I will issue a proclamation calculated to conciliate the noble Union men of the sunny South, and bring them back to those protecting folds in which our inedycated forefathers folded theirselves."
Nobody believed it could be done, my boy—nobody believed it could be done; but Villiam understood his species, and issued the following