the
'Daily----,' and signs himself 'Wabash.' Well, what of it? Nothing; only
some people think it ought to be spelt, 'War bosh.'

As I was saying: As I sit down to cover a few slips--it seems to me that
I have already filled out one slip of the paper; and, by the by, that
reminds me of a bright thing that Ben Zoleen,[5] a bachelor friend of
mine, allowed himself to be the father of, the other day. Ben likes to
'take something,' and about a month ago he took the 'enrolment.' An
Irishman, after laying claim to the usual disability--lameness
somewhere, and besides 'he was all the man that his wife Joanna had to
work for the family'--swore that all the property he had in the world
was a big porker, and _he_ had broken out and run away 'the divil knows
where,' the day before. 'Well, Mike,' said Ben, with a sympathizing
tear, 'yours is not the first fortune that's been lost in this country
by a mere _slip of the pen_' Whist! d'ye hear _that_?

The thought that first presented itself was the inquiry whether a man--

'Not that man, but another man,' interrupted me just then by coming into
the office and communicating the startling, yet not entirely unexpected
intelligence that 'they had begun to draft here in P.' 'No,' said I.
'Yes,' said he, going out in a hurry; 'up at the brewery.'

-Whether a man ought to write anything else than a love letter, in the
frame of mind that Voltaire said _that_ document should be composed in:
'Beginning without knowing what you are going to say, and ending without
knowing a word of what you have said.'

What do you think about it? I think so, decidedly.

HIBBLES.

* * * * *

We have heard of many an instance where the expression was not that
exactly of the idea that was intended; but in the following 'the idea,
the expression,' and everything else, are about as thoroughly mixed up
as one could well conceive. We were questioning a young lady as to the
standing of a clergyman in the town where she lived. 'Oh,' said she,
'_he is too popular to be liked very much_.' Identical! A favorite, we
are told, 'has no friends;' when a poor fellow gets to be popular in the
town of C----, we pity him.

* * * * *

Dick Wolcott, of the Tenth Illinois--which has seen no little service
since the war began--hath written unto us a letter, from which we pick
out the following. A great gossip is this same Dickon of ours, and a
rare good fel