"Ailey, me angel," says Mike, says he, "it'll be showin' our gratitude to Saint Payter," says he, "that we an't both kilt intirely," says he, "lavin' aich other orphans," says he, "if we just slather the owld humbug together," says he.
So they both fell upon Father O'Tod with a heartiness not to be described, and that excellent and neutral old gentleman was much mussed in his linen.
Far be it from me, my boy, to say that combined Europe, and especially the step-mother country, is at all like Father O'Tod, or that Slavery in the remotest degree resembles a small black bottle; but interference in the quarrels of married folks is apt to excite the liveliest enmity of both parties, and two-against-one has been known to result quite spiritedly therefrom.
Therefore, let the skiptail of Europe beware! for even I, an humble historian and no warrior, am filled with that spirit of defiance to everything across the Atlantic which might serve to inspire a brigadier, the editor of an able morning journal, a fierce turkey-cock, or any other type of matchless valor. One week ago, this American breast of mine was wild for the immediate redemption of lovely Ireland, by reason of the marvellous and triumphant capture of Paris by the thrice-valiant Mackerel Brigade; and to-day such an accession of national triumph stares all through the columns of our more stentorian morning journals, that I demand the immediate disenthrallment from foreign tyrants of Hungary, Poland, Venetia, Mexico, Canada, Jersey City, and the Guano Islands.
Munchausen, my boy, has surrendered! That mirror of chivalry and hollow-eyed wanderer in a forest of whiskers has yielded to his noble desire for a piece—of something to eat, and gracefully permitted himself and his command to be wooed from their guiding star,—starvation.
Immediately after the unprecedented battle for Paris, and while yet the agitated Miss P. Hen and divers enterprising political chaps who had followed our troops were organizing a Republican caucus in the bar-room of the captured capital, the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade pushed on after the unseemly Confederacies, with a view to further carnage. Not a stump of a tree was seen but it was at once taken for Mr. Davis himself, and had the direful Orange County Howitzers concentrated upon it; yet such dangers did not deter our venerable Mackerel boys from their assigned pursuit, and ere long their glittering spectacles surrounded a goodly swamp, wherein were perceptible the caitiff Confederacies up to their chins in the sacred soil. With only their heads above the mud, these sons of chivalry looked not unlike a vast cabbage-patch romantically viewed by twilight; while far up the vegetable vista glowed the eyes of Captain Munchausen, like those of an irascible Thomas cat who sees a dog down the lane.
Pitching his tent in a spot where no vagrant stone could reach it, the General of the Mackerel Brigade took off his coat and vest, rolled up the legs of his inexpressibles, and commenced the following
CORRESPONDENCE.
Munchausen, Southern Confederacy:
"Sir,—The result of the last strategical combat between us must convince you of the hopelessness of further military confusion in this country. I feel that it is so, and consider it my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of further carnage by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the sunny South known as the Southern Confederacy.