"Wher—where's Mary's—ary's—snuff-box?"
Not perceiving that this special remark was relevant to the question in view, a second Confederacy merely tightened the string which held his inexpressibles in place, and, says he:
"What has been proposed by the Honorable Gentleman from the Alms House is not sufficiently severe. No mercy should be shown to the Washington demon, and I move that any Federal soldiers found disturbing a Confederacy during the progress of a battle shall be at once executed for arson."
The impression created by this motion extended
even to Captain Munchausen, who fell flat on his face in a frantic attempt to catch the spectral insect, and exclaimed, in tones of awful solemnity:
"I don't want (hic) to be marri—ry—arried—Hic!"
After a moment's pause, the third Confederacy finished buttoning his coat with a bit of corn-cob, and says he:
"I move that the last Resolution be amended, to make it a capital crime for any person whatever to be guilty of Federal extraction."
Now, it chanced, my boy, that there was a Mackerel picket eating a confiscated watermelon in a clump of bushes close behind me; and just at this crisis of the debate, he casually tossed a piece of the rind in the direction of the Confederacies. It happened to fall in their midst, whereupon the enraged statesmen were seized with great tremblings, and immediately skedaddled in all directions, the last being Captain Munchausen, who at first endeavored to carry a rock of some hundred pounds' weight away with him, and ultimately retreated in a highly-circuitous manner, with an expression of abject despair under his cap.
It is said, my boy, that the celebrated Confederacy will resent the Proclamation by raising the Black Flag. It is a common belief, that if such be the case, it will be the duty of our generals to raise the blacks without flagging.