On witnessing this disaster, all the neighbors shrank with indignation from the aged father, and said it was all his doings. The poor old chap scratched his head, and says he:
"I don't see how it's my fault."
"Why," says a neighbor of much fatness, "you're always interfering,—that's what you are. Now, you'll never get back any of your furniture."
"Interfering?" says the paternal chap, innocently. "Why, how couldI interfere with Tommy, when I only let him do, in his own way, what he gave me to understand he was able to?"
Here all the neighbors sighed grievously, and says one:
"Miserable old man, we believe you mean well enough; but the fact is, you are a species of old idiot. It was your business to have had another son, who would have been this one's brother; so that if one met with a heart-rending failure on the stairs, the other could simultaneously have entered that back window by a ladder, and taken the chair by the rear. But you are always interfering. Take our advice now, and either give up drinking altogether, or arrange it so that those who drink with you may be persons not distinguishable from ourselves."
And they all departed, shaking their heads, my boy—they all departed shaking their heads; leaving the unfortunate old chap to bind up his offspring's nose, and to reflect upon the great iniquity of interfering with one son's success, by not having another.
The Government of our distracted country, my boy, is so very much like this well-meaning but imbecile old chap, that the failure of any one of its generals is entirely due to its interference in not having another general; who, in case that general did not succeed, could take his place before he failed to do so.
The Military Necessity produced by this interference took place at Paris, very recently, and shortly after the new General of the Mackerel Brigade had so nearly won the battle by that revelation of manly Shape to which I referred in my last letter.
Finding that the terrible bombardment of Paris, my boy, had routed the straggling Confederacies from that ancient city, the whole Mackerel Brigade marched safely across Duck Lake, leaving only the Orange County Howitzers on this side. Scarcely had the spectacled host occupied the city, when there appeared upon the main street the overwhelming Shape of the new General of the Mackerel Brigade, mounted upon a steed which was almost as sagacious as a human being; and holding his hat in one hand, after the manner of Washington entering Trenton. It was as though Frank Leslie's illustrated artist had just been commanded to draw a warlike picture, my boy, representing one of those equestrian heroes who all appear in precisely the same attitude, and seem to have lifted their hats for the particular purpose of showing with what mathematical precision their hair is parted.