This city, which is destined to become in time another Waterloo in the sense of offering everything drinkable in lieu of water, presents but very little except bar-rooms in the way of entertainment just now. Hence, my boy, we can properly appreciate the "Effigynia," as it is classically called, which a thoughtful yellow-vested chap of much breastpin, from Pequog, has just opened on Pennsylvania Avenue. According to advertisement, "this chaste and plastic exhibition consists of wax effigies of the five successive Generals of the Mackerel Brigade, with the peculiar personalities of each one, and the superiority of each over the other, unmistakably stamped on the forms and features of each!" Being a moral man, my boy, and much addicted to entertainments which differ from the prevailing drama of the day in obviating the necessity for steadily blushing, I repaired to the Effigynia the other evening and was much edified by the spectacle presented. Five mirrors standing at different angles with a wax figure of the first General of the Mackerel Brigade, were made each to reflect said figure; and I could not help feeling, my boy, that the likenesses were correct. I saw before me the counterfeit presentments of the five soldiers who had successively arisen to the highest Mackerel Command, and I found myself wondering how many more mirrors the exhibition would need before the war came to a head—containing brains.
It was on Tuesday morning that I ascended majestically to the slanting roof of my Gothic steed, the sagacious Pegasus, and moved perceptibly across Long Bridge once more, toward the camp of the Mackerel Brigade. It is worthy of note, my boy, that the architectural animal in question has greatly improved of late upon a diet of condemned straw hats, and now trots an hour in sixty minutes with the greatest ease of manner. An occasional cough but adds to the melancholy interest of his funereal cast of countenance; and as his head grows more and more vivid in its resemblance to an infant's coffin, his whole effect deepens in its churchliness and sepulchral solemnity.
As I neared the national head-quarters, the Mackerel Surgeon-General saluted me, and I observed that he kept his glance dreamily fixed upon the Gothic Pegasus.
"As I gaze upon that bony fabric," says he, biting a piece of calamus in soft professional abstraction,—"as I gaze upon that fleet skeleton you bestride, I cannot help thinking that Rule Britannia is frequently right in speaking of a horse as an 'oss; though she may use a superfluous 's' in the word. You see," says the surgeon, pausing to take a gray powder, and to try his lancet on his left thumb-nail,—"you see, the classical term 'os' signifies bone; and as bone is the prevailing aspect of your present charger, he might be termed an ''os' without violence to the lingual proprieties."
I have always suspected this surgeon, my boy, of being an accursed secessionist in disguise, and now I feel confident that he would not hesitate, if opportunity offered, to carry his fiendish affection for the well-known Southern Confederacy to the extent of actually differing with me upon some point in conversation. In such times as these, my boy, there can be no middle ground for a man; he must either be heart and soul with his country's murderous foes, or ready to agree entirely with me in anything I may say or think. God save the Republic!
Upon arriving at a locality, which I refrain from naming, lest I should thereby betray my beloved country or make a mistake in spelling, I found the venerable and spectacled veterans of the thrice-valorous Mackerel Brigade just returned from a spirited pursuit of certain regiments of disreputable Confederacies who were stealing farms on the outskirts of Paris. These Confederacies had even penetrated into storied Accomac, and removed everything they found upon the farms there except the mortgages. Hence the demand upon the aged and unconquerable Mackerel Brigade for an immediate walk in that direction, and there they had gone by the most circuitous and profoundly strategical route afforded by the county maps. General John Smith, the latest edition of Mackerel Commander, gave leadership of his advance guard to Captain Villiam Brown, and immediately five-and-twenty inflamed reporters frantically telegraphed to as many excellent and reliable morning journals, that all the thieving Confederacies were about to be bagged, and that all the revolting details would be given in our next issue. It was toward evening, my boy, when Captain Villiam Brown, mounted upon his geometrical steed, Euclid, came riding up to the advanced head-quarters of the new general to report results.
"Well, young man," says the General, with Spartan equanimity, "have we bagged the enemies of human freedom?"
Villiam looked up from the demijohn under the table, upon which he had been earnestly gazing, and says he, "No, sire; but the very next thing to bagging them has occurred."
"Relate the tale," says the General, with dignity.
"Why," says Villiam, "instead of our bagging them, they have been sacking us."