LETTER CV.
BEING OUR CORRESPONDENT'S LAST EFFORT PRIOR TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF A NEW MACKEREL CAMPAIGN; INTRODUCING A METRICAL PICTURE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE SINGLE COMBAT ON RECORD; AND SHOWING HOW THE ROMANCE OF WOMAN'S SENSITIVE SOUL CAN BE CRUSHED BY THE THING CALLED MAN.
Washington, D.C., March 12th, 1865.
This sagacious business of writing national military history once a week, my boy, has at times presented itself to my mind as a public obligation nearly equal in steady mutual delight to the wholesome occupation of organ-grinding. Mark the Italian nobleman who discourses mercenary twangs beneath your window, and you shall find him a person of severe and gloomy visage,—a figure with an expression of being weighed down to the very earth by a something heavier than the mere mahogany box of shrieks out of which he grinds popular misery by the block. Not that he has a distaste for music, my boy; not that he was the less enthusiastic at that past period "when music, heavenly maid, was young" to him; but because the daily recurrence to his ears of precisely the same sounds for ten years, has a horribly depressing effect of unmitigated sameness; and music has become to him an ancient maiden of exasperating pertinacity. It quite affects me, my boy, when I see one of those melancholy sons of song carrying a regularly organized monkey around with him; for it is evident he finds in such companionship a certain relief from the anguish of monotony. Guided by the example, I sometimes get a Brigadier to keep me company also, and you can hardly imagine how often I am saved from gloom by the amusement I experience in seeing his shrewd imitation of a real soldier.
But even this resource may fail; for there are periods when such imitations are very bad indeed; and then the mind of the wearied scribe, like that of my departed friend, the Arkansaw Nightingale, may at any moment expire for want of food. Shall I ever forget the time, my boy, when the Nightingale came to Washington, as President of the Arkansaw Tract Society, for the express purpose of protesting against the war, and procuring a fresh glass of the same he had last time?
"This war," says he, waiting for it to grow cooler, and thoughtfully contemplating the reflection of himself in the bowl of a spoon,—"this war, if it goes on, wont never shet pan till the hair's rubbed off the hull country, and the 'Merican Eagle wont hev enough feathers in his tail to oil a watch-spring. Tell you! stranger, it'll be wuss than Tuscaloosa Sam's last tackle; and that wasn't slow."
"What was that?" says I.
"What!" says the Nightingale, stirring in a little sugar, "did you never hearn tell of Tuscaloosa's last? Then here's the screed done into music under my pen and seal; and as it an't quite as long's the hundred nineteenth psalm, you don't want a chair to hear it."
Whereupon the Arkansaw Nightingale whipt from some obscure rear pocket a remarkable handful of written paper, and proceeded to excite me with
"A GREAT FIT.