"John Brown's body," which has been "marching on" for some time past, my boy, being thus considerably in advance of our strictly Constitutional Army, has at length made a great strategic movement, and evoked the following promissory note from our Honest Old Abe:
Colorless Domicil, Sept. 22d, 1862.
"Ninety days after date I promise to pay the Southern Confederacy, or order, the full amount of its deserts.
"$ Emancipation.
H. O. Abe.
The morning after this little settlement was made, my boy, I met the conservative Kentucky chap on Pennsylvania avenue, and was greatly edified by his high-minded remarks on the subject. "Having recently disposed of any attached contrabands to good
advantage," says he, sagely, "I am now deeply convinced that my brother-in-law, the Southern Confederacy, has brought this dispensation upon himself. I have said all along that it would be so at last," says the genial Kentucky chap, casting another glance at the score of a recent game of Euchre which he held in his hand. "I have said all along that it would be so at last, and I am still disposed to sustain the Administration and crush the Black Republicans."
When I remembered the sentiments held by this accommodating chap only about a week ago, my boy, I could not but feel that he had made a remarkably sudden revolution on the axes he had to grind; and as there was a pleasing spice of human audacity in his easy way of suiting his style to the political demands of the moment, I was strongly reminded of a chap I once knew in the Sixth Ward.
He was a young chap of gorgeous vest-pattern, and one Sunday afternoon he went out riding with another sprightly young chap, who was accompanied by his plighted pink bonnet. They were riding joyously along in their hired vehicle, my boy, pleasantly discussing the merits of Eighty's new foreman, and other subjects equally well calculated to entertain and improve the fond female mind, when, as they turned a sharp corner, there loomed up, at some distance ahead, a house bearing a sign reading:
FEED STORE
OATS FOR SALE HERE.