"We've reached our second base, my friend, being compelled to do so by the treble force of the enemy."
I went on to the second base, which I reached just in time to see Captain Villiam Brown, on his geometrical steed Euclid, arresting the flight of Company 3, Regiment 5, under Captain Samyule Sa-mith.
"Samyule! Samyule!" says Villiam, feeling behind him to make sure that his canteen was all right, "is this the way you treat the United States of America at such a critical period in her distracted history?"
"I scorn your insinivation," says Samyule, "and repel your observation. I am executing a rapid flank movement according to Hardee."
"Ah!" says Villiam, "excuse my flighty remarks. I do not mean to say that you can be frightened," says Villiam, soothingly; "but it's my opinion that your mother was very much annoyed by a large-sized fly just before you were added to the census of the United States of America."
Villiam's idea of the connection between cause and effect, my boy, is as clear as a brandy-punch when the sugar settles.
The battle now raged in a manner which I am not permitted to describe, with results I am not allowed to communicate. Villiam appeared wherever the fray was the thickest, waving his celebrated sword Escalibar (Anglo-Saxon of crowbar), and encouraging all the faint-hearted ones to get between himself and the blazing Confederacy. Borne a considerable distance backward by the force of circumstances, he had reached a comparatively clear spot in the rear, when he suddenly found himself confronted by Captain Munchausen, of the Southern Confederacy.
Captain Munchausen was mounted upon the thinnest
excuse for four legs that I ever saw, my boy; and what tempted nature to form such an excuse when the same amount of bone-work would have brought more money, it was not for mortal man to know.