Last evening a new brigadier-general, aged ninety-four years, made a speech to Regiment Five, Mackerel Brigade, and then furnished each man with a lead-pencil. He said that, as the Government was disappointed about receiving some provisions it had ordered for the troops, those pencils were intended to enable them to draw their rations as usual. I got a very big pencil, my boy, and have lived on a sheet of paper ever since.
Yours, pensively,
Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER XII.
GIVING AN ABSTRACT OF A GREAT ORATOR'S FLAGGING SPEECH, AND RECORDING A DEATHLESS EXPLOIT OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.
Washington, D.C., September 8th, 1861.
The weather in the neighborhood of Chain Bridge still continues to bear hard on fat men, my boy, and the man who carries a big stomach around with him will be a person in reduced circumstances before he gets to be a colonel. The Brigadier-General of the Mackerel Brigade observed, the other day, that he had been in hot water four weeks running, and ordered me to work six hours in the trenches for not laughing at the joke; he said that old Abe had people expressly to laugh at his jokes, and had selected his Cabinet officers because they all had large mouths, and could laugh easily; he said that he was resolved to have his own jokes appreciated, and if he didn't, he'd be perditionized. It's my impression—I say it's my impression, my boy, that the general got off his best joke when he promised the Mackerel Brigade to look after their interests as though they were his brothers. He may look after them, my boy, but it's after they're out of sight. I don't say that he takes advantage of us: but I know that just after a basket of champagne was sent to the camp, directed to me, yesterday, I saw him sitting on an empty basket in his tent, trying to wind up his watch with a corkscrew. I asked him what time it was, and he said the Conzstorshun must and shall be blockade—dade—did. I told him I thought so myself, and he immediately burst into tears, and said he should never see his mother again.
On Tuesday, there was a rumor that the Southern Confederacy had attacked at regiment at Alexandria, for the purpose of creating a confusion, so that it might pick the colonel's pockets, and Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade, was ordered to go instantly to the rescue. Just as we were ready to march, a distinguished citizen of Washington presented a sword to the colonel from the ladies of the Capital, and made an eloquent speech. He spoke of the wonderful manner in which the world was called out of chaos at the creation, and spoke feelingly of the Garden of Eden, and the fall of our first parents; he then went on to review the many changes the earth had experienced since it was first created, and described the method of the ancients to cook bread before stoves were invented; he then spoke of the glories of Greece and Rome, giving a full history of them from the beginning to the present time; he then went on to describe the origin of the republican and democratic parties, reading both platforms, and giving his ideas of Jackson's policy; he then gave an account of the war of the Roses in England, and the cholera in Persia, attributing the latter to a sudden change in the atmosphere; he then went on to speak of the difficulties encountered by Columbus in discovering this country, and gave a history of his subsequent career and death in Europe; he then read an extract from Washington's Farewell Address; in conclusion, he said that the ladies of Washington had empowered him to present this here sword to that ere gallant colonel, in the presence of these here brave defenders of their country.
At the conclusion of this speech, starvation commenced to make great ravages in the regiment, and the colonel was so weak, for want of sleep, that he had to be carried to his tent. A private remarked to me, that, if we could only have one more such presentation speech as that, the regiment would be competent to start a grave-yard before it was finished. I believe him, my boy!