federacy, it is ordered that they shall answer the
following paternal questions before passing the lines of the
Mackerel Brigade:

"I. For how many years has your age been Just Twenty-two?

"II. How many novels do you consume per week?

"III. Were you ever complained of to the authorities for
inordinate piano-forte playing?

"IV. Do you work slippers for the heathen?

"V. If so; for _what_ He, then?

"VI. What newspaper's 'Marriages and Deaths' do you consider the
best?

"VII. In selecting a church to attend, what colored prayer-book do
you find most becoming to your complexion?

"VIII. How much display of neck do you consider necessary to
indicate a Modesty which shrinks from showing an ankle?

"IX. Did you ever stoop to folly? or is it Folly alone that
stoops to you?

"X. Did you ever eat as much as you wanted at dinner, when
members of the opposite sex were opposite?

"It is also ordered that no female visitor to the celebrated
Southern Confederacy shall carry more than eight large trunks and a
bonnet-box for each month in the year; and that no female shall
pass the line, whose dimensions in full dress exceed the ordinary
space between two pickets, as the latter will, on no account be
permitted to edge away from their stations at this trying crisis in
the history of our distracted country.

"O'PAKE,
"Sergeant Mackerel Brigade."

This inhuman order had scarcely been issued when there came to the
Mackerel lines in front of Paris a virtuous young female, aged 23 with
the figures reversed, who was disgusted with the great vulgarity of the
North, and wished to visit the marriageable Southern Confederacy,
having heard that the Confederacy was carefully Husbanding its
resources. Being a poor girl, with "nothing to wear," she only had
seven Saratoga trunks, ten bandboxes, fourteen small carpet-bags, and a
lap-dog; yet the ill-bred O'Pake was suspicious enough to examine one
of her trunks.

He ruthlessly opened it in her presence, my boy, and quickly met with
the horrible fate which was at once immortalized by the Mackerel
Chaplain in the following awful presentment:

"THE AVENGING SKELETON."

"When tyrant purpose made the martial fool
With brief authority profoundly drunk,
Unto his minions issued forth a rule,
To search each Southward-going woman's trunk