* * * * *
There was a movement of the audience toward the door. Men and women went out silently from the place, exchanging covert glances of smothered agitation with each other. Only one person remained with the orator. It was an old file with a blue umbrella, who had occupied a back seat and paid breathless attention to all the performances. After the others had left the hall, he walked deliberately from his seat to where the high-toned moral chap was still standing, and gazed into the face of the latter with an expression of unmitigated wonder. He then walked twice around him; having done which he confronted him again, thumped the ferule of his umbrella on the floor, and says he: "Well!" The old file paused an instant, and then says he: "well, I'll be dam," and waddled precipitately from the place.
I've often thought of it since then, my boy; and I've always wondered why it was that the solitary
old file with the blue umbrella should say that he be dam.
To return to Western Virginia; I found, upon my arrival in one of the camps near Winchester, that the patriotic democratic chap was making arrangements to divide the army there into Wards, instead of regiments, in order, as he said, that the returns might come in systematically.
"For instance," says he, "suppose that in the skirmish with the Confederacy which is going on just ahead of us, we should lose—say seventy-five votes; how much easier it would be to say; the 'Fourth Ward shows a decrease since last year of seventy-five Republicans', than to say that such a regiment, of such a brigade, of such a division, has lost so and so?"
I was reflecting upon this novel and admirable way of putting it, my boy, when an orderly came tearing in, with a report of the skirmishing going on.
"Ha!" says the patriotic chap to him; "how does the canvas proceed?"
"Well," says the orderly, breathlessly, "Banks' outpost has lost twenty votes in the Tenth Ward by desertions, and has thirty double-votes wounded; but I think Banks can still keep neck-and-neck with McDowell."
"You do, hey?" says the patriotic chap, in great excitement. "Then McDowell must not lend Banks a single vote. Tell him to keep his Ward Committees under cover until Banks gets through with his canvas; for if he takes part in that, and the election results in a victory over the Confederacy, Banks will get all the