(From the N. Y. Sunday Mercury.)
Yesterday, as I sat
sipping the oath in my room, and attentively examining a mirror which reflected
with life-like accuracy the young woman doing up her back hair in a room across
the street, my page Mr. Mortimer Montague, introduced a fascinating youth,
whose serpentine locks, big bouquet, and perishable gloves, made me think of a
barber confounded with a tailor under pledge of compromise with a ladies
shoemaker.
“Your name, sir?”
says I, with a slight cough.
“Wykoff,” says he.
“Why cough?” says I;
“why now can I help coughing, when my visitor puts on airs enough to give
anybody a cold?”
“Joke,” says he,
smiling like a Miss. gambler when he steps ashore at New Orleans with his
pockets full of winnings. “I come,” says
he, “to sell you some information concerning McClellan’s plan for an advance to
Manassas.”
“How did you get it,
my Adonis?” says I.
“I am acquainted
with one of the chambermaids at the White House,” says he, and she divulged the
plan.”
The Beautiful
stranger cleared his throat with a lozenge, and says he:
“The plan is
this: A secret circular is to be
immediately issued to all the Brigadiers on the Potomac, informing them that a
new bar-room has just been opened at Manassas with free lunch every day. It is calculated that this exciting document
will produce an immediate advance of the whole Potomac army to the point named,
as the Brigadiers are all such strict temperance men that they would consider
it their religious duty to immediately put the liquor out of the way. Nothing, in fact, could prevent an immediate
and irresistible advance under such circumstances.”
“Admirable young
man!” says I, “If what you say be true, Manassas is doomed. The South is destined to be speedily
humiliated; for our Brigadiers will pitch’er and tumble’er about so, that
whatever peace we may offer her she will be but too glad to goblet up while she can.”
From this
conversation, my boy, you can infer what you choose; but it seems sound. The South will be whipped at her stronghold,
even if it be the strong h’old ale. A
Britisher ventured to tell the General of the Mackerel Brigade the other day
that he didn’t think the South could be beaten.
“The South,” says
the General, suffering a bit of the lemon-peel to come to the front of his
mouth, “The South! why my dear old Rosbif, we can liquor with out trying.”
I went down to
Accomac early in the week my boy, having heard that Capt. Villiam Brown and the
conic section of the Mackerel Brigade where about to march upon Fort Muggins,
where Jeff. Davis, Beauregard, Mason, Slidell, Yancey and the whole rebel
Congress were believed to be entrenched.
Mounted on my gothic steed Pegasus, who only blew down once in the whole
journey, I repaired to Villiam’s department, and was taking notes of the
advance, upon a sheet of paper spread on the ground, when the commander of the
Accomac approached me, and says he:
“What are you doing,
my bantam?”
“I’m taking notes,”
says I, “for a journal that has such an immense circulation among our gallant
troops that when they begin to read it in the camps, it looks, from a distance,
as if there had just been a heavy snow storm.”
“Ah, says Villiam, thoughtfully,
“newspapers and snow storms are somewhat alike, for both make black appear
white.” “But,” says Villiam,
philosophically, “the snow is the more moral; for you can’t lie in that with
safety, as you can in a newspaper.” In
the language of Gen. Grant at Donelson, says Villiam, sternly, “I propose to move upon your works
immediately.”
And with that he
planted one of his boots right in the middle of my paper.
“Read this ere
Napoleonic dockyment,” says Villiam, handing me a scroll. It was as follows:
EDICK.
Having noticed that
the press of the United States of America is making a ass of itself, by giving
information to the enemy concerning the best methods of carrying on the
strategy of war, I do hereby assume control of all special correspondents,
forbidding them to transact anything but private business, neither they, nor
their wives, nor their children, to the third and fourth generation.
I. It is ordered that all advice from editors
to the War Department, to the General commanding, or the Generals commanding
the armies in the field, be absolutely forbidden; as such advice is calculated
to make the United states of America a idiot.
II. Any Newspaper publishing any news whatever,
however obtained shall be excluded from all railroads and steamboats, in order
that country journals, which receive the same news during the following year,
may not be injured in cirkylation.
III. This control of special correspondents does
not include the correspondent of the London Times, who wouldn’t be believed if
he published all the news of the next Christian era. –
By order of
VILIAM BROWN, Eskevire,
Capt. Conic Section Mackerel Brigade.
I had remounted
Pegasus while reading this able State paper, my boy, and had just finished it,
when a nervous member of the advance guard accidentally touched off a cannon,
whose report was almost immediately answered by one from the dense fog before us.
“Ha!” says Captain
Villiam Brown, suddenly leaping from his steed, and creeping under it – to examine
if the saddle girth was all right – “The fort is right before us in the fog,
and the rebels are awake. Let the Orange
County Company advance with their howitzers, and fire to the northeast.”
The Orange County
Company, my boy, instantly wheeled their howitzers into position, and sent some
pounds of grape towards the meredian, the roar of their weapons of death being
instantaneously answered by a thunderous crash in the fog.
Compnay 5, regiment
3, Mackerel brigade, now went forward six yards at double quick, and poured in
a rattling volley of musketry, dodging fearlessly, when exactly the same kind
of volley was heard in the fog, and wishing that they might have a few rebels
for supper.
“Ha!” says captain
Villiam Brown, when he noticed that nobody seemed to be killed yet, “Providence
is on our side, and the unnatural rebellion is squelched. Let the Anatomical Cavalry charge into the
fog into the fog, and demand the surrender of Fort Muggins,” continued Villiam,
compressing his lips with mad valor, “while I repair to that tree back there,
and see if there is not a fiendish secessionist lurking behind it.”
The Anatomical
Cavalry immediately dismounted from their horses, which were too old to be used
in a charge, and gallantly entered the fog, with their sabers between their
teeth, and their hands in their pockets – it being a part of their tactics to
catch a rebel before cutting his head off.
In the meantime, my
boy, the Orange County howitzers and the Mackerel muskets were hurrying a
continuous fire into the clouds, stirring up the angels, and loosening the
smaller planets. Sturdily answered the
rebels from the fog begirt fort; but not one of our men had yet fallen.
Captain Villiam
Brown was just coming down from the top of a very small tree, whither he had
gone to search for masked batteries, when the fog commenced lifting, and
disclosed the anatomical Cavalry returning at a double quick.
Instantly our fire
ceased, and so did that of the rebels.
“Does the fort
surrender to the United States of America?” says Villiam to the captain of the
Anatomicals.
The gallant dragoon
sighed, and says he:
“I used my
magnifying glass, but could find no fort.”
“At this moment, my
boy, a sharp sunbeam cleft the fog as a sword does a vail, and the mist rolled
away from the scene in two volumes, disclosing to our view a fine cabbage
patch, with a dense wood beyond.
Villiam deliberately
raised a bottle to his face and gazed through it upon the unexpected prospect.
“Ha!” says he,
sadly, “the garrison has cut its way through the fog and escaped, but Fort
Muggins is ours! Let the flag of our
Union be planted on the ramparts,” says Villiam, with much perspiration, “and I
will immediately issue a proclamation to the people of the United States.”
Believing that
Villiam was somewhat too hasty in his conclusions, my boy, I ventured to
insinuate that what he had taken for a fort in the fog, was really nothing but
a cabbage enclosure, and that the escaped rebels were purely imaginary.
“Imaginary!” says
Villiam, hastily, placing his canteen in his pocket. “Why, didn’t you hear the roar of their artillery?”
“Do you see that
thick wound yonder?” says I.
Says he, “It is
visible to the undressed eye.”
“Well,” says I, “What
you took for the sound of a rebel firing, was only the echo of your own firing,
in that wood.”
Villiam pondered for
a few moments, my boy, like one who was considering the propriety of saying
nothing in as few words as possible, and then he looked angularly at me, and
says he: –
“My proclamation to
the press will cover all this, and the news of this here engagement will keep
until the war is over. Ah!” says
Villiam, “I would not have the news of this affair published on any account;
for if the Government thought that I was trying to cabbage in my Department it
would make me the Minister to Russia immediately.”
As the Conic
Sections of the Mackerel Brigade returned slowly to headquarters, my boy, I
thought to myself: How often does a man
after making something his particular forte, discover at last that it is only a
cabbage patch, and hardly large enough at that for a big hog like himself.
Yours, philanthropically,
Orpheus C. Kerr
– Published in The
Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 15, 1862, p.
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