Youths, you're yelept youth's youngest; yet you'll
Zestless zig-zaggers zanyable zealed.
I exhibited that pleasing little poem to a Mackerel chap, who stuttered, my boy; and he came so near going into apoplexy through his endeavors to read it, that I was obliged to make a joke, in order that he might smile, relax, and recover.
And now let your mind fly, like a wearied dove, to the celebrated Arcadian scenes of festive Accomac, where the Mackerel Brigade continues to reconnoitre in force, and awaits the death of the Confederacy by old age. Men, my boy, who entered this strategic war in the full bloom of youth, now go with stooping shoulders and tottering gait when they have a barrel of flour to carry, and the bloom has departed from every part of them save the extreme tip of that handle
of the human countenance which first meets the edge of an open door in the dark. Even the Mackerel brass-band begins to grow feeble, often making pitiable attempts to execute stirring strains on his night key bugle, as though unconscious that by long disuse in his pocket it had become clogged with bread and cheese.
There is, on the Southern border of Accomac, my boy, a solitary house, containing furniture and the necessaries of life, which the Conic Section of the Mackerel Brigade had been ordered to guard. It stands immediately on the verdant banks of Awlkwyet River, where that stream must be at least ten inches deep; and as the first regular bridge is ten miles below it, of course the Conic Section, to guard the house, was placed at the end of that bridge—it being a principle of national strategy never to recognize any Confederate raid not made across a regular bridge.
Now it chanced, that while the Conic Section at the bridge was taking a short nap, having been up very late the night before; and while the beloved General of the Mackerel Brigade was visiting a portion of his beautiful home-circle in Paris, that a very dirty Confederacy, riding in a seedy go-cart, made his appearance on the bank of the river opposite the house, and commenced to make a raid right through the water to the shore this side. His geometrical steed wet his feet thereby, and the wheels of his squeaking vehicle were damped by this barbarian way of offering irregular opposition to the Government; but what cared he for the rules of civilized warfare, which are the only authorized West Point editions? Like all his infatuated
countrymen, he was rendered less than strategic by the demon of Secession, and he crossed by the unmilitary ford instead of by the military bridge.
This is, indeed, heart-sickening.
There was a Mackerel chap who slept in the house to take care of a large black bottle, and when he heard the go-cart driving up before the door, he stuck his head out of the window, and says he:
"What is it which you would have in these irregular proceedings, Mr. Stuart?"