At this crisis the Conservative Kentucky chap shut the stove-door with great violence, and seemed for a moment to meditate personal outrage on the young assistant oysterer, who had just arrived with the coal-skuttle.
Before I could make rejoinder, my boy, there approached us a middle-aged gentleman in a shocking bad hat and an overcoat very shiny about the seams, who had cordially invited himself to take a little something that morning, and had accepted the invitation with pleasure. Straightening himself suddenly, with a violent start, to restrain an unruly hiccup, or make me believe that he made the noise with his feet, he eyed the Conservative chap with a benignant smile, and says he:
"You're mistaken there, sir,—muchly, sir, hem! Mr. Smith is my friend, sir; my bosom friend, till time shall end.—Beautiful idea, that.—My friend, I say; and he's only been appointed to the medical department by recommendation of the President.—Let nature do her best, and then your doctors are of use to men.—Byron.—Yes, sir, Mr. Smith is now a military doctor; and that's how you've made the mistake. You thought it was 'Sir John' Smith they said, when it was 'Sur-geon' Smith!"
As he said this, the middle-aged gentleman became aware that one of his toes was sticking very much through his boot, and retired to confidentially ask the assistant oysterer if any one had yet found that valuable diamond scarf-pin which he (the middle-aged gentleman) had recently lost.
I looked at the Conservative Kentucky chap, my boy, and his chin had sunk down upon his breast. He felt that his mistake was also the mistake of Kentucky, and his heart was too full for further conversation.
'Twas on Thursday morn,—Thanksgiving Day,—that I blithely scaled the heights of my faithful Gothic steed, the architectural Pegasus, and softly urged that ruined temple of a horse to trot me a lively reminiscence of his youth. Forward we went with a unique, chopping motion, with now and then a stumble to keep the blood in circulation, interpersed with occasional plunges at stumps and shyings at fluttering withered leaves. When you have mounted a beloved horse, on a fine, bracing autumnal morning, my boy, did you ever feel like a kind of new and superior being; as though you and your steed were one consummate individual, inspired by one bounding, uncontrollable impulse, and impatiently regarding the line of the horizon as a tyrannical limit to a ride that should else tear gallantly and recklessly forth into illimitable space? Did you ever feel thus, my boy?...
Because, if you did, your feelings were not at all like mine.
Onward we go, like a wrecked centaur before the wind, and soon these eager eyes behold once more the camp of the aged and thrice-valiant Mackerel Brigade. Far and near, the spectacles of the decrepit veterans are flashing in the sun; whilst before them is the much-besieged City of Paris, and behind them (in consequence of recent rains) the storied waters of Duck Lake. The veterans are clustered around Paris, my boy, like so many exceedingly thirsty chaps around the tall and well-spiked fence inclosing a cherished pump, and if ever they get at it, they will at least drink it dry. Scarcely had I reined-in, near the edge of Duck Lake, where certain members of Rear Admiral Head's iron-plated mackerel squadron were discharging cases and barrels by the score,—scarcely had I dismounted from the Gothic Pegasus and hitched him to the body of a slumbering Mackerel chap, who had already overdone his Thanksgiving, when I beheld Captain Villiam Brown approaching, on his geometrical steed, the angular Euclid. Following him, but on foot, was Captain Bob Shorty in command of the famous Conic Section of the Mackerel Brigade.
"Ha!" says Villiam, leaping down to meet me in dreadful entanglement with his sword, and hastily plunging into his bosom a small black bottle of regulation cough-drops, "have you flown hither like an narrer from a bow, to view the sublime spectacle of the troops at their feed? Ah!" says Villiam, quickly clasping his hands to save the bottle from slipping out of his breast-pocket, "the beautiful pageant of a nation feasting these martial beings on turkey, is something for besotted Europe to tremble at. Next to serving up ice-cream to the sailors in a gale of wind at sea, this"—