CONTAINING THE VENERABLE GAMMON'S REPORT OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE WAR HAS CONDUCTED ITSELF UP TO THIS TIME; AND THE MOST SURPRISING EPITAPH OF A VICTIM OF STRATEGY.
Washington, D.C., April 12th, 1863.
Depressed, my boy, by that low-spirited sense of reverence for shirt-collared Old Age, which is a part of my credulous nature, I proceed to record that the Venerable Gammon has once more torn himself from idolatrous Mugville to beam venerably upon all the capital the nation has left; and as I mark how fatly he waves continual benediction to the attached populace, I am impressed anew with the conviction of the serious mental magnitude of large-sized Old Age. It was on Monday that a delegation of anxious civilian chaps grovelled around this aged idol of a mournful nation; and as soon as the awe-stricken spokesman of the party had crawled within speaking distance of the Venerable Gammon, he sniffed deferentially, and says he:
"Sire, we desire to know how soon we may expect an honorable peace to end the present war, which it is perpetual bloodshed."
The Venerable Gammon placidly placed his beneficent right hand between his patriarchal ruffles, and says he:
"My friends, this war is like a great struggle between two hostile armies; it will continue until it has ceased, and it will cease when it is no longer continued. Peace," says the Venerable Gammon,—waving indulgent permission for the sun to go on shining,—"peace is the end of the War, as war is the end of Peace; therefore, if we had no war, peace would be without end, and if we had no peace, war would be endless."
Then all the fond civilian chaps grovelled ecstatically at the time-honored feet of the benignant parent of his country, and four-and-twenty reliable morning journals immediately published a report that Richmond had been taken—for another year.
But what has particularly endeared the Venerable Gammon to the hearts of his distracted fellow-countrymen is, his able report of the manner in which the war has conducted itself since the First of April, 1862. I cannot exactly understand my boy, how this benignant benefactor of his species comes to know anything at all about military matters; nor am I prepared to state that he had any call whatever to report upon national strategy; but he has issued a startling statement, and I give the whole
REPORT.
"On the first of April, 1862, on the day immediately succeeding the 31st of May in the same year, a solitary horseman might have been seen approaching the camp of the Mackerel Brigade from Washington. He was a youth in the prime of life, and carried a carpet-bag containing the daily morning journals of that date. Upon reaching the tent of the General of the Mackerel Brigade, he sought an immediate interview with the latter, and at once revealed to him that it was reported in all the morning journals, that the celebrated Southern Confederacy had evacuated Manassas just two weeks previously, thereby rendering an advance upon that stronghold by our national troops a subject demanding immediate attention.