LETTER LXXII.
REPORTING THE LATEST SMALL STORY FROM "HONEST ABE," AND DESCRIBING THE MOST MERCENARY BAYONET CHARGE ON RECORD.
Washington, D. C., October 4th, 1862.
Our Honest Abe, my boy, may lack these brilliant qualities which in the great legislator may constitute either the live-oak sceptre of true patriotism or the dexter finger of refined roguery, as the genius of the age pivots on honesty or diplomacy; but his nature has all the sterling characteristics of the heartiest manhood about it, and there is a smiling sun in his composition which never sets. That he is in his anecdotage, my boy, is a fact
"Which nobody can deny;
Or, if they do, they lie!"
yet even his anecdotes have that simple sunlight in them which is, perhaps, a greater boon to the high place of a nation in the dark hour, than the most weird and perpetual haze of crafty wisdom could be.
There was a dignified chap here from New York on Monday; a chap who has invented many political conventions in his time, and came here for the special
purpose of learning everything whatsoever concerning the present comparative inactivity of the able-bodied Mackerel Brigade.