Upon quitting the Strawberry Festival I returned post-haste again to Paris, where I arrived just in time to start with Captain Bob Shorty and a company from the Conic Section of the Mackerel Brigade on a foraging expedition. We went to look up a few straw-beds for the feeding of the Anatomical Cavalry horses, my boy, and the conservative Kentucky chap went along to see that we did not violate the Constitution nor the rights of man.
"It's my opinion, comrade," says Captain Bob Shorty, as we started out—"it's my opinion, my Union ranger, that this here unnatural war is getting worked down to a very fine point, when we can't go out for an armful of forage without taking the Constitution along on an ass. I think," says Captain Bob Shorty, "that the Constitution is as much out of place here as a set of fancy harness would be in a drove of wild buffaloes."
Can such be the case, my boy—can such be the case? Then did our Revolutionary forefathers live in vain.
Having moved along in gorgeous cavalcade until about noon, we stopped at the house of a First Family of Virginia who were just going to dinner. Captain Bob Shorty ordered the Mackerels to stack arms and draw canteens in the front-door yard, and then we entered the domicil and saluted the domestic mass-meeting in the dining-room.
"We come, sir," says Bob, addressing the venerable and high-minded Chivalry at the head of the table, "to ask you if you have any old straw-beds that you don't want, that could be used for the cavalry of the United States of America."
The Chivalry only paused long enough to throw a couple of pie-plates at us, and then says he:
"Are you accursed abolitionists?"
The conservative Kentucky chap stepped hastily forward, and says he:
"No, my dear sir, we are the conservative element."
The Chivalry's venerable wife, who was a female Southern Confederacy, leaned back a little in her chair, so that her little son could see to throw a teacup at me, and says she: