REFERRING TO THE MOSQUITO AS A TEST OF HUMAN NATURE, EXPLAINING THE LONG HALT OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE, AND NOTING THE COURT OF INQUIRY ON CAPTAIN VILLIAM BROWN.
Washington, D. C., October 26th, 1862.
Early this morning, my boy, I sauntered across the Long Bridge and took my seat upon the topmost rail of a fence enclosing a trampled meadow. There I sat, like Marius, my boy, contemplating the architectural ruin embodied in my Gothic steed, Pegasus, and ever and anon whistling abstractedly to my frescoed dog, Bologna.
By the gods! I really love these dumb friends of mine. The speculative eye of the world sees in poor Pegasus nothing more than an architectural dream—the church architecture of the future—and, I must confess, my boy, that the Gothic charger does look something like a skeleton chapel at a distance; it sees in Bologna only a mongrel cur, whose taste for the calves of human legs is an epicurean outrage on walking society. But for me, my boy, there is a human pathos in the patient fidelity of these zoological curiosities which appeals to my best manhood. I have had a hard and thankless life of it; my experience with
the knowing political chaps of the Sixth Ward was enough to grind everything like human tenderness out of my nature, and make me turn into an arrogant and contemptuous misanthrope; but there are times when the cold nose of Pegasus against my cheek, or a wag from that speaking tail of Bologna—which curls up behind him like a note of interrogation, to ask how his master feels—will give me such a sensation of wishing to protect and be kind to the Helpless, that I feel myself a better man for the practical Christianity of such humble society.
There is my mosquito, the youthful Humboldt, too! He came to me one night, about two years ago, my boy, practising much profound strategy to capture my nose; and when I foiled him by a free use of both arms of the service, the unterrified and humming manner in which he changed the base of his operations and came on again, excited my admiration and respect. Catching him in a little net cage made from the musquito bars of my bed, I kept him safely by me, and now use him as a test of human nature. In God's providence, each minute created thing has its appointed use, my boy, and depend upon it, the use of the musquito is to test human nature.
There was a veteran political chap from Albany called upon me last Sunday night. A sage and aged chap of infinite vest, who wears the broad-brimmed hat of reticent respectability, and nestles in much shirt-collar like a centuried owl. Having taken a pinch of snuff after the dirty manner of a Gentleman of the Old School, he merely paused to take a hasty glance
at the plan for the next Senatorial election in his note book, and then says he:
"I'm grievously dis'pointed, yea, piteously vexed, to see the partisan spirit raging so furiously in State elections, at a time when an expiring country calls upon all her sons, irrespective of party, to join hands in the great work of saving her. Why cannot these turbulent denouncers of each other be like me, who recognize no division of party in this national crisis? I would have a union of all men to vote for the one great ticket of my choice; and even the democrat I would recognize as a fellow being in such a case."
I suspected this grievous old chap to be a hypocrite, my boy, and I managed to let Humboldt free from his cage for the purpose of testing him. As the aged chap commenced to get warm, Humboldt began to make raids round his sagacious head, and with divers slaps in the air, the aged chap waxed spirited, and says he;