Yours, seriously,
Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER LXII.
CONTAINING FRESH TRIBUTES OF ADMIRATION TO THE DEVOTED WOMEN OF AMERICA, AND DEVELOPING THE GREAT COLONIZATION SCHEME OF THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BLACK RACE.
Washington, D. C., August 15th, 1862.
Once more, my boy, this affectionate heart would render tribute of gushing admiration to the large souled women of America, who are again commencing to luxuriate and comfort our majestic troops with gifts almost as useful to a soldier as a fishing-pole would be to the hilarious Arab of Sahara. As I ambled airily near Fort Corcoran on Monday, my boy, mounted on my gothic steed Pegasus, and followed by the frescoed dog Bologna, after the manner of the British nobility, I chanced upon a veteran of the Mackerel Brigade, who had come up from Paris on one of those leaves of absence which grow from the tree styled Sycamore. He was seated under a wayside oak, examining some articles that had recently come to him in a package; now and then addressing his eyes in the more earnest language of the Sixth Ward.
Having reined-in my spirited architectural animal, and merely pausing to administer a crumb of cracker from my pocket to a hapless blue-bottle fly which had
rashly alighted from the backbone of the charger, and was there starving to death, I saluted the Mackerel veteran, and, says I:
"Comrade, wherefore do you select this solitary place to use language only fitting a brigadier when he is speaking to an inferior officer, or a high-toned conservative when referring to negroes, Wendell Phillips, and the republican party?"