Yours, exuberantly,
Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER XCVIII.
RECOUNTING A CHASTE "RECONSTRUCTION" ANECDOTE OF THE SIXTH WARD, AND DIVULGING CAPTAIN VILLIAM BROWN'S INGENIOUS ALPHABETICAL EXPERIMENT WITH COMPANY THREE.
Washington, D.C., Sept. 25th, 1863.
It is a high-moral idea of poets, congressmen, and the writers for our improving weekly journals of exciting romance, my boy, that it is a noble and majestic thing to feel warmly for one's country; but when the thermometer stands at 90 in the shade, and we join with our fellow-beings in shedding tears from the tops of our foreheads, I find my disinterested patriotism fully equal to the self-abnegation of the remark, that I had rather be cool than be President. Our brethren are already in the field; why stand we here idle? Is ice so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty Dollars! I know not what other gentlemen would have; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me a fan. Thus, my boy, after the manner of the departed Patrick Henry, did I expose myself to the conservative Kentucky chap, as we stood panting together in the vestibule of the Treasury Buildings the other day; and says he:
"The loyal State of Kentucky, of which I am a part, has no objections to warm weather in the summer-time; provided it is not indorsed by the fanatical Black Republicans. Warm weather," says the conservative Kentucky chap, thoughtfully, "is of much service to the old rye crop of Kentucky; but Kentucky would forego even her old rye, rather than see retarded the movements of that army whose constitutional duty it is to restore the Union—not reconstruct it."
The regular list of dead idiots for this year being not quite full yet, my boy, there are still persons living who can perceive no very immense difference between Restoring the Union and Reconstructing the Union; which reminds me of a chaste little incident that once occurred in the Sixth Ward.
A highly-respectable liquor-selling chap, of enlarged stomach and overwhelming shirt-collar, having just been elected Alderman, through the influence of his excellent moral character, and about two thousand dollars judiciously invested in Irishmen, gave a fashionable party to celebrate this triumph of the purity of elections, and invited about two-thirds of the Fire Department to bring their wives and sweethearts. Promptly at nine o'clock, two Hose Companies, of unblemished reputations for noise, four Engine Associations noted for saving one pine table from the devouring element to every two Brussels carpets they ruined with water, three Hook-and-Ladder Societies greatly distinguished for climbing into the third-story windows of the building two doors from the burning domicil, and an equivalent number of the cotton-hearted women of America, were on hand in the aldermanic drawing-rooms. The new public dignitary received them all with that exquisite blandness of demeanor which is so becoming to great men who have just made a rush from obscurity: and says he,—