It was on Wednesday that the Venerable Gammon being seized with a fresh and powerful inspiration to confer a new benefaction on his favorite infant, his country, came post haste from his native Mugsville, and was quickly blessing the idolatrous populace in front of the Treasury Buildings with some knowledge of his benevolent scheme for paying the cost of the War.
"War?" says the Venerable Gammon, fatly,—pronouncing the word as though he had just invented it for the everlasting benefit of some poor but virtuous language,—"War costs money, and money costs gold. What we want is gold, to pay for the money that pays for the war. And where shall we get that gold?" says the Venerable Gammon, with a smile of knowing beneficence.
"By reference to a California journal, I find that California and Nevada contain about twenty columns of gold mines, and that each mine is worth so many millions that its directors are obliged to levy daily assessments of Five, Ten, and Twenty-five cents per share, or 'loot,' in order that the shareholders, in their immense wealth, may not forget that their distracted country has a decimal currency to be countenanced and supported. Now I propose," says the Venerable Gammon, magisterially pulling out his ruffles with his fat thumb and forefinger, "I propose that the War debt and the board of our Major Generals be paid by an especial tax on these mines, thus"—
"Killing the goose which lays the golden egg," broke in an aged Treasury Clerk standing near, whose countenance possessed all the oppressive respectability that large spectacles and a pimple on the nose can possibly bestow.
The Venerable Gammon was hereupon seized with such a violent fit of coughing that farther argument was impracticable; and it is not decided to this day whether it would be in keeping with the eternal fitness of things to tax the miners to pay the majors.
Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER CI.
EXPLAINING THE WELL-MEANT DUPLICITY OF THE JOURNALS OF THE OPPOSITION; AFFORDING ANOTHER GLIMPSE OF THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONSERVATIVE SENTIMENT; AND SHOWING HOW THANKSGIVING DAY WAS KEPT BY THE MACKERELS.
Washington, D.C., Dec. 10th, 1864.