"GENERAL ORDER.
"The General Commanding announces to the Mackerels that the Southern Confederacy has taken place. Also, that the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade has taken place back again.
"Yesterday morning the Confederacy massed himself and succeeded, through the unabated slumbers of the persons hired to sit up with him, in obtaining Fort Bledandide.
"Prompt measures were taken by Captain Villiam Brown, Eskevire; and, although an entire regiment fell in the assault, the work was retaken.
"Two lessons can be learned from these operations: First, that the notorious Southern Confederacy is now reduced to a mere shell; and, secondly, that said shell has a very short fuse.
"The General of the Mackerel Brigade.
("Green Seal.")
I was still reading this pointed document, when there arrived, from Paris, a Confederate being, in carpet slippers and white cotton gloves, whose name was Lamb, and who bore peace-propositions.
"I have come," says he, affably, "to say, that the army of the North can now be admitted into the army of the Confederacy for a conjoint attack on combined Europe, after which the sunny South will forgive all her creditors, and see what can be done for the Northern masses."
Let this frank speech prove, my boy, what all our excellent democratic[6]morning journals of limited circulation have so long maintained,—that it rests entirely with the President to secure an immediate cessation of hostilities with the Southerners, by forgetting all the wrongs of the past, while they are for getting all the rights of the future.