"I shall have to call Pa," said poor Libby.
"Not a bit of it!" shouted Bob, ceasing his Terpsichoreanism
for a moment; "don't you see the joke? It's all in the looking-glass, my pet. When I thought it was a quarter past Twelve and fled the residence, it was really a quarter of Twelve—don't you see? The looking-glass reversed the hands on the watch!"
And so it was, mon ami. Hold your own time-piece with its face to a mirror, and you will "see the point."
But what can excuse that General who, after leading the whole country to expect that he would take Richmond in time for me to conclude this picture of Southern life, as I originally planned to do, now changes his base of operation in a strategic manner, and introduces a fizzle into romantic literature——
Here Smith-Brown, who happened to be awake, coughed intrusively, my boy, and says he:
"The fault is not the General's, my friend. The Secretary of War is alone to blame for it. He has killed literature."
How true was that speech, my boy. The Secretary is indeed responsible for this literary disaster, as well for everything else; and if he ever undertakes to stand on his own responsibility, he will find plenty of room to move about.
Yours, droopingly,
Orpheus C. Kerr.