have faith?" The missionary cracked a peanut, and says he: "Verily, I did; but they said they couldn't have faith on empty stomachs." The respectable chap pondered a while, and says he: "If they didn't have faith, my frens, the whole matter is explained. We, at least, have done our duty. We have prayed for them, frens—we have prayed for them." And the brethren went home to their dinners.
Public mass meetings, my boy, to help a struggling country, are like prayer-meetings to aid the starving poor; the intention is good, but the practical benefit resulting therefrom is not visible to the naked eye.
There was a large meeting at Accomac, several new liquor-shops having been opened there recently, and the speakers were as eloquent as it is possible for men to be when advising other men to do what they don't care to do themselves. A chap of large abdominal developments was specially fervid. Says he: "Let us show to them as is tyrants and reveling in the agonies of down-trodden Europe, that this Republic is able to put down all enemies whatsomever, without interfering with any of the inalienable rights of those who, though our enemies, are still our long-lost brothers. (Frantic applause.) Shall it be said that twenty-two millions of people cannot put down eight millions without injuring those eight millions? (Shrieks of approbation, and cries of "That's so!") No! a thousand times no! We fight, not to injure the South; not to interfere with them, which is our own flesh and blood, but to sustain the Constitution rendered sacred by Revolutionary gore! (Overwhelming enthusiasm.) The creatures which is trying to break up this here
beneficent Government, ask us what we are fighting for, then? Gracious hevings! what a question is this! Do they not know what we are fighting for—that in this unhappy struggle we—that our purpose, I would say, in prosecuting hostilities is to—is to—DO IT? Of course it is."
This speech, short, terse, and to the purpose, was gloriously received by everybody, except a friendless chap, who said he didn't understand the last clause; and he was immediately sent to jail for daring to be so traitorously obtuse.
Though the General of the Mackerel Brigade was seated upon the highest barrel on the platform, my boy, and blew his nose louder than any one else, he did not wish to be seen, nor did he intend that the assemblage should call upon him for the speech sticking out of his side-pocket; but when the throng accidentally found him to be the most prominent figure in sight, they thoughtlessly called upon him to say something. The General laid aside his fan with some embarrassment, and says he:
"My children, I love you. My children," says the General, motioning to his aid to fill the tumbler again, "I daresay you expect me to say something, and though I am unprepared to speak, there is one thing I will say. If anything goes wrong in this war, nobody is to blame, as I alone am responsible. Bless you, my children."
As the idol of the populace finished these touching remarks, and resumed his tumbler and fan, there was but one sentiment in the whole of that vast assemblage, and a democratic chap immediately went and
telegraphed to Syracuse that the prospect for a Democratic President in 1865, was beautiful.
The meeting might have lasted another week, my boy, thereby rendering the Union cause utterly invincible, but for the imprudence of an insane chap who proposed that some of the young men present should enlist. This malapropos and singularly inconsistent suggestion broke up the assemblage at once, in great disorder—volunteering being just the last thing that any one thought of doing. Greatly edified and encouraged by what I had heard, my boy, I made all haste for Paris, where I found the Mackerel Brigade and Commodore Head's fleet in great excitement over the case of an Irish gentleman who believed this to be a white man's war, and had started for Paris, just fourteen minutes after landing in this country, for the express purpose of protesting against any labor being performed by negroes, while there were white men to do it. Colonel Wobert Wobinson, of the Anatomical Cavalry, quieted him by saying that, although a number of negroes were then engaged in digging trenches, a new line of holes in a far more unhealthy place would be commenced in the morning, and that none but Irishmen should be permitted to dig them.