Upon reaching the Mackerel camp, and exchanging festive salutations
with Captain Bob Shorty, who was trying to purchase the dressed skin of
a handsome copperhead snake from Corporal Veller, of the California
Reserve, to use as a sword-belt,--after exchanging salutations, I
repaired to the tent of the chaplain, to witness the marriage of one of
the younger Mackerels to a pretty Shenandoah belle. As the happy pair
stood before the drum to be made wife and man, I noticed that the
bride's rosy cheeks paled like a sunset under the twilight, until the
languishing stars of her eyes shone only upon snow.

And now, my boy, let me say a few words respecting the recent attempted
draft of Abe L. bodied men in thrice-famous Accomac, and the
freedom-loving spirit in which it was met by the Sovereign People. With
a prescient view to being amply prepared for an overwhelming assault
upon combined Europe, which is shortly to be made by Secretary Seward
and the muscular United States of America, our Uncle Abe ordered a
draft of Accomackians to be made at once. Hereupon the Accomac "Morning
Dog," an excellent daily journal, indulged in a high-minded editorial
on the fiendish proclivities of the Governor of Accomac, and the
general wildness of all the Accomackians to be drafted if he would let
them. With great promptness, that admirable palladium of human freedom,
the "Evening Cat," avowed that it spit upon the gubernatorial
scurrility of its growling contemporary; that it deprecated mob
violence and trusted that no mob would resist the draft; but could not
help believing that the Sovereign People might possibly arise in their
majesty and occasion a speedy funeral in the family of the
editor-in-chief of the venomous and intolerable "Morning Dog."

It was at 10 o'clock A.M., my boy, when the drafting commenced in
Accomac, and in half an hour thereafter the Sovereign People,
consisting of several gentlemen from Ireland, were asserting the
dignity of a free community in a manner worthy of the sacred cause of
Emigration. It is a touching fact, my boy,--a touching and aesthetical
fact, that the American people are ever so able to find foreign
champions to protect their freedom from governmental infringement that
they seldom have occasion to do any fighting for it themselves.

The Sovereign People of Accomac, being fully aroused and slightly
inebriated, proceeded to vindicate the majesty of our excellent
national Democratic Organization by