"PROCLAMATION.
"The Union men of the South are hereby informed that the United States of America has reasserted hisself, and will shortly open a bar-room in Paris. Also, cigars and other necessaries of life.
"By order of
"Captain Villiam Brown, Eskevire.
"There," says Villiam, "the human intelleck may do what violence might fail to accomplish. Ah!" says Villiam, "moral suasion is more majestik than an army with banners."
In just half an hour after the above Proclamation was issued, my boy, the hum of countless approaching voices called us to the ramparts. A vast multitude was approaching. It was the Union men of the South, my boy, who had read the manifesto of a beneficent Government, and were coming back to take the Oath—with a trifle of sugar in it.
How necessary it is, my boy, that men intrusted with important commands—generals and governors responsible for the pacification and welfare of misguided provinces—should understand just how and when to touch that sensitive chord in our common nature which vibrates responsively when man is invited to take something by his fellow-man.
Scarcely had Villiam assumed his office and suppressed two reporters, when there were brought before him a fugitive contraband of the color of old meerschaum, and a planter from the adjacent county, who claimed the slave.
"It's me—that's Misther Murphy—would be afther axing your riverence to return the black crayture at once," says the planter; "for its meself that owns him, and he runn'd away right under me nose and eyes as soon as me back was turned."
"Ah!" says Villiam, balancing a tumbler in his right hand. "Are you a Southerner, Mr. Murphy?"