most popular characters in
the exciting tales furnished by our weekly journals of
romance,--such as Lord Mortimer, Claude de Percy, Lester
Heartsease.

"Correspondents who do not comply with this requirement will not be
permitted to assist in surprising the so-called Southern
Confederacy.

"THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE."

(Blue Seal.)

After we had all duly digested this useful and sagacious General Order,
my boy, Captain Samyule Sa-mith was ordered to make a detour of Duck
Lake with the Anatomical Cavalry, and dig a canal in the rear of the
well-known Confederacy; and the Mackerel Brigade, under the personal
supervision of the Grim Old Fighting Cox, commenced to cross the
pontoon-bridges in two divisions. The bridge that I was upon, my boy,
was at once attacked at the other end by a surprised Confederacy with a
large pair of scissors, who malignantly cut that end loose. There was
an aged civilian chap, from Albany, of much stomach and a broad-brimmed
hat, standing near me; and when he found the bridge beginning to move,
he smote his breast, and says he:

"Where are we drifting to?"

"Be not alarmed, Mr. Weed," says I, pleasantly; "we shall soon repair
the damage."

"Hem!" says he, "I wish I'd gone over on the other platform at first."

He was quite an old man, my boy, slowly sinking into the rising waves
of his own fat; and for that reason appeared to have a chronic fear of
some unexpected submersion.

The Mackerel Brigade, in two parts, having reached the opposite shore
of Duck Lake in safety, the Grim Old Fighting Cox ordered Captain
Villiam Brown and Captain Bob Shorty to take each a regiment of
spectacled veterans and cautiously feel the Confederacies' lines, while
he led the remainder of the national troops to a small village at hand,
which had particularly requested to be immediately destroyed. It was
his great strategical plan, my boy, to form his lines in the shape of a
triangle, thus inclosing the unmannerly Confederacies between three
fires, and winning a great geometrical victory. The Confederacies being
duly surrounded, and the village being set on fire at the apex of the
triangle, the Grim Old Fighting Cox withdrew to a tent, spread a map of
the world upon a camp-stool before him, and proceeded to take
topographical observations. Drawing from his saddle-bags an instrument
of opaque glass, of tubular character, quite large in circumference
about half-way u