You will perceive, my boy, that a great piece of geometrical strategy had been thus achieved; but it now turned out that the General of the Mackerel Brigade had made a mistake, and a most serious one. While taking his observations with his ingenious glass instrument, he had seen just double the number of triangles (2) that might be formed by certain great strategical evolutions, as he had seen just double the number of the Confederacies; but, in his haste, he had neglected to divide the ascertained number of triangles by two, as he should have done; and now he discovered that only one triangle was formed, and that by the unseemly and chuckling Confederacies. Such a nice thing is strategy, and so easily is it deranged!
Owing to this error, of course nothing more could be done, and on Tuesday evening the Mackerel Brigade returned, full of enthusiasm, to their original side of Duck Lake. The affair had been merely a reconnoissance.
Last evening, at dusk, I was talking to the Mackerel Chaplain about this singular strategical affair, and says he:
"God help us! The skeleton regiments we have left standing are scarcely more than the skeleton regiments we have left sleeping; and only the sleeping ones can look upward."
Let gentle charity, my boy, silence our tongues to the dread mistake that is past; for he who made it lost by it the glorious immortality his meanest soldier slain has won.
Yours, gently,
Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER XCIV.
AFFORDING AN INSTANCE OF IMPERCEPTIBLE PATRIOTISM; PRESENTING THE PROFOUND COMMENTARY OF AN EMINENT FOREIGN MILITARY CRITIC; AND REPORTING THE LAST EFFUSION OF THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.