"I tell you, my child," this aged file would remark, polishing his spectacles with a red silk handkerchief,—"I tell you, the popular perception wants nicety; wants delicacy; wants capacity to distinguish between the noisy, bustling style of operation by which it loves to be deceived,—Populus vult decipi,—and the silent, almost imperceptible agencies through which all really great results are accomplished."
Having heard this chaste sentiment repeated daily for about three years, my boy, the very practical hardware chap began to find his nature growing embittered, and resolved to do something desperate. So, one morning, after listening quietly to the essay of the aged file, and refusing to tell a small boot-blacking child of six years old the lowest price for one of Jones's Patent steam-ploughs, this cast-iron chap suddenly removed his hands from around an object on the counter, which he had, apparently, been attempting to conceal, and revealed to view a boy's lignum-vitæ peg-top, which stood seemingly exactly balanced on its steel tip.
"Who would think now," said he, reflectively, "that it could be turning all the time?"
The aged file advanced his blue spectacles to the very verge of the top, and says he:
"Well, now, it's wonderful, an't it? Any one would think, to look at that simple toy, that it stood perfectly still; and yet its velocity of movement must be prodigious. Go into yonder street," exclaimed the aged file, dropping his umbrella in the excitement of the moment,—"go into yonder street and bring in any man you please, and that man could swear that this top is not spinning at all. And why? Simply because the velocity of this top, being several millions of revolutions per minute, is greater than his ignorant eye can comprehend. Upon my soul!" ejaculated the aged file, bending once more to the top, with great enthusiasm, "upon my soul! it's wonderful."
Over the counter came the hardware chap, with one bound, and says he:
"Why, you durned old fool, the top an't moving at all!"
And sure enough, the very practical cast-iron chap had just stuck the top up with his hand, in order to bring the popular perception theory of the aged file to grief.
Ordinary persons, my boy, observing the Mackerel Brigade any time these three years, might think it was not moving at all; but we know its General to be the Top of the heap, and we know that he is making revolutions—in the whole art of war.
Let, then, the venerable and strategical Mackerel Brigade strike off impressions of itself in the mud before Paris; while the conic section, under Colonel Wobert Wobinson, walks calmly through the depths of storied Accomac; while Captain Samyule Sa-mith and the Anatomical Cavalry prosecute Confederate railroad researches, and Rear Admiral Head's iron-plated squadron keeps watch and fishes for bass near the captured Fort Piano, on Duck Lake. For the present, be mine the pleasanter duty of imperfectly reporting that stately Ball at the Patent Office, which clinched the re-inauguration of our Honest Abe, and was attended by none of the old aristocracy of the capital, save those who had received invitations.