Just as he finished speaking, my boy, and whilst he was picking his teeth to assist meditation, Captain Samyule Sa-mith came riding hastily in from his successful game of "Old Sledge," bringing the stakes with him, and says he:
"Well, old Medicusses, have you examined the beings which is unhappily bereft of sense?"
"Yea," says the Insanitary chap, with a grievous groan, "we've examined all those poor creatures, in that whole line, and find them all hopelessly and incurably mad."
Samyule gave such a start that he split one of his boots, and says he:
"Which line?"
"Why, that line there," says the chap, pointing.
"By all that's Federal!" says Samyule, slapping his left leg; "I'll be blessed if you old goslings hav'n't been examining the WRONG LINE! Them veterans there are the sane ones!"
Insanity, my boy, like Charity, so seldom begins at home, that we sometimes mistake the best kind of sanity for it when we meet the latter, as a stranger, abroad. The man we call a maniac is frequently nothing more than a sane man seen through a maniac's spectacles.
But the whole body of Mackerels, sane and insane
alike, unite in a feeling of strong anguish blended with enthusiasm, at the removal of the beloved General of the Mackerel Brigade. He has been so much a Father to them all, that they never expected to get a step farther while he was with them.