the Honest Abe's best policy to conciliate all political parties for the sake of Northern unity of action, and it cannot be doubted that the removal of the Blue Ridge at this crisis would occasion the bitterest heart-burnings and jealousies in the manly bosom of our nation's Democratic organization. It would be construed into proof that the Honest Abe had yielded to the fiendish clamor of the crazy Abolitionists, and had rendered a restoration of the adored Union-as-it-Was of our forefathers impossible, by destroying that Blue Ridge which was an essential part of the Union. The manly Organization, my boy, would prefer an armistice with the unseemly Confederacy to a removal of the Blue Ridge—a removal, my boy, authorized neither by the Constitution, the pursuit of happiness, nor the rights of man. The Blue Ridge is at the head of our army, and our army is at the foot of the Blue Ridge. The mistaken Confederacy is on the other side, my boy, and the Organization very justly reasons, that the fiendish Abolitionists virtually confess themselves to be, in heart, on the same side with the Confederacy; for if their desired removal of the Blue Ridge were carried out, the distinction of the two opposite sides would be practically lost, and the United States of America and the Southern Confederacy would be all on one side, and there might be an unconstitutional collision.
Hence, my boy, the Honest Abe has concluded to leave the Blue Ridge where it is, and remove the idolized General of the Mackerel Brigade.
But before I proceed to describe the inexpressible anguish produced by the adoption of even this grievous
alternative, permit me to record the useful proceedings of the National Insanitary Committee, in their philanthropical investigation of the lunacy now prevailing to an alarming extent in the Army of Accomac.
For some weeks past, my boy, insanity has been frightfully upon the increase in the ranks of the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade. Many Mackerels have even gone raving at times, persisting in the vague and incoherent exclamation that they "Couldn't See It." There was some hope that this terrible mental aberration might be stayed, if the superannuated corps were supplied with spectacles; but the relief thus given was only temporary; and finally, when one of the poor maniac chaps went so far as to yell, that, even by the aid of his spectacles, he couldn't see what was the use of butting against the Blue Ridge all the time, it was deemed proper to call in the National Insanitary Committee.
Captain Samyule Sa-mith, whose duty it was to draw the Brigade up in two lines—the sane chaps on one side of the fence, and the insane on the other—hastened back to Accomac to finish a game of "Old Sledge," on which four drinks were distinctly pending, and left the aged Committee to perform its task at leisure.
In anticipation of this sad ceremony, my boy, I had sent my architectural steed, the gothic Pegasus, down to Accomac, and thither I went on Tuesday morning, to amble totteringly from thence to the scene of Insanitary proceedings.
The Committee had just commenced work upon its line of chaps, and was examining the patients one by one.
The first invalid, Lively Mike, was born in the Sixth Ward, and weighed ninety-two pounds. He was a poor, slouching chap, my boy, resembling poverty's Ruin, two-thirds covered by an ivy vine of rags. His angular countenance was rich with unwashings, save a clean irregular circle just around his ugly mouth.