aled to
view a boy's lignum-vitae peg-top, which stood seemingly exactly
balanced on its steel tip.

"Who would think now," said he, reflectively, "that it could be turning
all the time?"

The aged file advanced his blue spectacles to the very verge of the
top, and says he:

"Well, now, it's wonderful, an't it? Any one would think, to look at
that simple toy, that it stood perfectly still; and yet its velocity of
movement must be prodigious. Go into yonder street," exclaimed the aged
file, dropping his umbrella in the excitement of the moment,--"go into
yonder street and bring in any man you please, and that man could swear
that this top is not spinning at all. And why? Simply because the
velocity of this top, being several millions of revolutions per minute,
is greater than his ignorant eye can comprehend. Upon my soul!"
ejaculated the aged file, bending once more to the top, with great
enthusiasm, "upon my soul! it's wonderful."

Over the counter came the hardware chap, with one bound, and says he:

"Why, you durned old fool, _the top an't moving at all_!"

And sure enough, the very practical cast-iron chap had just stuck the
top up with his hand, in order to bring the popular perception theory
of the aged file to grief.

Ordinary persons, my boy, observing the Mackerel Brigade any time these
three years, might think it was not moving at all; but we know its
General to be the Top of the heap, and we know that he is making
revolutions--in the whole art of war.

Let, then, the venerable and strategical Mackerel Brigade strike off
impressions of itself in the mud before Paris; while the conic section,
under Colonel Wobert Wobinson, walks calmly through the depths of
storied Accomac; while Captain Samyule Sa-mith and the Anatomical
Cavalry prosecute Confederate railroad researches, and Rear Admiral
Head's iron-plated squadron keeps watch and fishes for bass near the
captured Fort Piano, on Duck Lake. For the present, be mine the
pleasanter duty of imperfectly reporting that stately Ball at the
Patent Office, which clinched the re-inauguration of our Honest Abe,
and was attended by none of the old aristocracy of the capital, save
those who had received invitations.

The old aristocracy of the capital, my boy, having been accustomed only
to association with the ministers from combined Europe, and the
chivalry who had, now and then, a nice wife or daughter to sell, could
not be expected to countenance a plebeian