LETTER XIX.
NOTICING THE ARRIVAL OF A SOLID BOSTON MAN WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED LITERARY PRIZE, AND SHOWING HOW VILLIAM BROWN WAS TRIUMPHANTLY PROMOTED.
Washington, D.C., November —, 1861.
Having just made a luscious breakfast, my boy, on some biscuit discovered amid the ruins of Herculaneum, and purchased expressly for the grand army by a contracting agent for the Government, I take a sip of coffee from the very boot in which it was warmed, and hasten to pen my dispatch.
On Wednesday morning, my boy, the army here was reënforced by a very fat man from Boston, who said he'd been used to Beacon street all the days of his life, and considered the State House somewhat superior to St. Peter's at Rome. He was a very fat man, my boy: eight hands high, six and a half hands thick, and his head looked like a full moon sinking in the west at five o'clock in the morning. He said he joined the army to fight for the Union, and cure his asthma, and Colonel Wobert Wobinson thoughtfully remarked, that he thought he could grease a pretty long bayonet without feeling uncomfortable. This fat man, my boy, was leaning down to clean his boots just outside of a tent, when the General of the Mackerel Brigade happened to come along, and got a back view of him.
"Thunder!" says the general, stopping short; "who's been sending artillery into camp?"
"There's no artillery here, my boy," says I.
"Well," says he, "then what's the gun-carriage doing here?"
I explained to him that what he took for a gun-carriage was a fat patriot blacking his boots; and he said that he be dam.
Soon after the arrival of this solid Boston man, my boy, I noticed that he always carried about with him, suspended by a strap under his right arm, something carefully wrapped in oilskin. He was sitting with me in my room at Willard's the other evening, and says I to him: