"Pshoo! pshoo!—As I was saying, we should all strive to conciliate our political adversaries—pshoo! and endeavor to promote a spirit of unity even with the most disaffected peace men—pshoo, you beast!—and not act like Greeley and Wendell Phillips, and Beecher—confound it, pshoo!—and other infernal fanatics; who, by their indiscreet, imprudent—curse it, pshoo!—and infernal, God-forsaken niggerism, are wounding the tenderest feelings—thunder and lightning, pshoo!—and rousing the hellish passions of really good democrats, who thereby make capital from their sadly mistaken—blazes and blue lightning, pshoo!—and devilish craziness, which is unfortunately
confusing—good heavens, pshoo, pshoo!—and damning their own party, and knocking thunder out of the gubernatorial canvass; besides—besides—"
Here this aged chap made a flying leap at Humboldt, missed his aim, and then dashed madly from the room.
Depend upon it, my boy, a musquito is a great test of human nature. The little chap operates like an outside conscience, and brings the real thing to the surface.
Why does not the Mackerel Brigade advance?
This, my boy, is the question of the hour. For what do our heroes wait? Is it for india-rubbers, or umbrellas, or fine-tooth combs? No! be not deceived: it is for none of these.
Hem! The fact is, my boy, many respectable though married Mackerels entered the army of the Accomac when they were in the prime of life; and as old age steals softly upon them, as the seasons and the bases of operations run through their changes, and year succeeds year, the eye-sight of many of them waxes dim, and fails in the process of Nature. I know some thousands of Mackerels, my boy, who are already so blind that they have not seen a rebel for six months; and hence, no advance-movement can be judiciously made until the brigade is supplied with spectacles. Without these, the idolized General of the Mackerel Brigade will not do anything until he gets ready. It was the want of these, as I now discover, that prevented our troops seeing the Southern Confederacy when he made his late raid across Awlkwyet River. Let the spectacles be at once procured, my boy; or an
indignant and bleeding nation will at once demand a change in the Cabinet.
Company 3, Regiment 5, is the only Company yet fitted with glasses, and was therefore selected to make a reconnoissance toward Paris, under Colonel Wobert Wobinson, on Tuesday afternoon, for the purpose of discovering whether the Confederacies there were very tired of waiting yet. Glaring through their spectacles, these gallant beings advanced until they met a Parrot shell going the other way, and then returned with hasty discipline, bringing with them a captured contraband, who was so anxious to remain in their company that he actually ran very fast.
Upon regaining the camp in Accomac, my boy, the colonel had the intelligent contraband brought before him, and says he: