"My children," said the Venerable Gammon, with a fleshy smile, signifying that he had made them all, and yet didn't wish to seem proud,—"My children, this war is progressing just as I originally planned it, and will end successfully as soon as it terminates triumphantly. Behold my old friend, Phœbus," says the Venerable Gammon, pointing an adipose forefinger at the sun, with a patriarchal air of having benignantly invented that luminary, though benevolently permitting Providence to have all the credit, "it is not more certain that my warm-hearted friend Phœbus will rise in the yeast to-morrow morning than that the Southern Confederacy will not be capable of fighting a single additional battle after it shall have lost the ability to take part in another engagement."
Then the entire populace requested immediate leave to black the boots of their aged benefactor and idol, and seven-and-thirty indefatigable reporters, with pencils behind their ears, telegraphed to seven-and-thirty powerful morning journals, that the end of the rebellion might be looked for in about a couple of hours.
I don't mind revealing to you, as a curious fact, my boy, that no mortal man is able to understand how the Venerable Gammon has done anything at all in this war. In fact, I can't exactly perceive what earthly deed he has actually performed to make him preferable to George Washington; but it is generally inferred, from the size of his watch-seals and the lambency of his spectacles, that he has in some way been more than a parent to the country; and the thousands now buying some beneficent Petroleum stock, which he has to sell, are firmly convinced that its sale is positively calculated to forever benefit the human race.
Oh! that I were Ovid, or Anacreon, to describe fittingly the recent little wedding entertainment, at which this excellently-aged teacher and preserver of his species was fatly present, diffusing permission for all mankind to be happy and not mind him. After beaming parentally upon the officiating Mackerel chaplain, with a benignity inseparable from the idea that all clergymen were the work of his hands, he took the dimpled chin of the bride between his thumb add forefinger, and says he:
"My children, I am an old, old man; but may ye be happy." Here he kissed the bride. "Yes, my children," says the venerable Gammon, with a blessing on the world in every tone of his buttery voice, "I am far down in the vale of years; but may ye be very happy." And he kissed the bride. "Still, my children," says the Venerable Gammon, with steaming spectacles, "I would be willing to be even older, if my country desired it; but may ye be forever happy." So he kissed the bride. "Oh!" says the Venerable Gammon, abstractedly placing a benefactor's arm around her waist, and looking benevolently about the room as though consenting to its possession of four walls,—"Oh!" says he, "it is a privilege to be old for such a cause as this; but may ye be supremely happy." At this juncture he kissed the bride. "I am old enough," says the venerable Gammon, "to be your brother." And he kissed every young woman there.
Whereupon it was the general impression that an apostle was present; and when the bridegroom subsequently hinted, in a disagreeable whisper, that two bottles of port were enough to confuse the mind of a Methuselah himself, there was a wonderful unanimity among the ladies as to the probable misery of the bride's future life.
But wherefore, O, Eros, dost thou detain me in such scenes as these, while the hoarse trumpet of bully Mars calls me to the field of strategic glory? Hire an imaginary horse, my boy, at a fabulous livery-stable, and, in fancy, trot beside me as I urge my architectural steed, the Gothic Pegasus, toward the Mackerel lines in front of Paris.
Believing that you are entirely familiar with the very fat works of C. Tacitus, and minutely remember Book II. of his Annals, let me draw your attention to that fort Aliso which he describes as being built upon the River Luppia by Drusus, father of Germanicus, and constituting the commencement of a chain of posts to the Rhine. Just such a work has been erected on the shores of Duck Lake by Mackerel genius, as the key to a long line of remarkable mud-works. It is modelled after Aliso, chiefly because that work was notorious for being near the Canal of Drusus; and the whole world knows that canal-digging is inseparable from all our national strategy.
Fort Bledandide is the name of the Mackerel institution destined to receive immortality in Mr. Tacitus Greeley's exciting History of this distracting war; but to me belongs the earlier privilege of enabling a moral weekly journal to confuse its readers with the first reliable report of the marvellous battle of Fort Bledandide.
It was at quite an early hour, my boy, on the morning of my arrival before Paris, that a faint sound, as of gentlemen firing guns, was heard to proceed from a point some six feet outside Fort Bledandide. Nobody was up at the time, save a few venerable Mackerels, who, in daily expectation of some carnage, had selected that hour at which to write their wills; and it was left for these antique beings to be the first of our troops disturbed by a shameless Confederacy who lifted his head slowly above our works, and deliberately aimed a deadly horse-pistol at Jacob Barker, the regimental dog. Hideous was the explosion ensuing, as the night-key with which the dread weapon was loaded went hurtling through the air some ten yards above its mark; and an aged Mackerel looked up from his penmanship.