my boy, this horrible twistification was the result of the
reporter's getting confused about who was the speaker--him on the hotel
balcony or the talkative chaps in the street. If our excellent national
Democratic Organization would have less talking during their public
speeches, my boy, there need be no such inhuman mistakes as that which
has calumniated and utterly prostrated the Venerable Gammon.

On Wednesday I took a trot on the war-path upon the architectural
street, Pegasus, and found the veteran Mackerel Brigade back at Paris
again. They had made a great march from the Blue Ridge, my boy, and
when I reached the front I found a scientific chap from Cincinnati
taking observations. He stuck a tall stick into the ground, and
scratched a long line on the damp sod, from the foot of this stick to
the extreme right of the spectacled Brigade, letting the toes of the
front rank of the Mackerels just touch it. Then he attached a powerful
magnifying-glass to about the centre of the upright stick, and
commenced looking through it very intently all along the line he had
drawn.

I observed him attentively, and says I: "What is the nature of your
contract with the Government, my serious friend?"

He rubbed the glass with his blue silk pocket-handkerchief, and says
he: "I have invented this useful arrangement to ascertain whether or
not the Army of Accomac is really advancing. I closely watch the line
to which the toes of the front rank of the army are already very near,
and could almost swear that the forward movement is still going on. The
average speed of this army," says the scientific chap, calculatingly,
"has hitherto been six miles in six weeks; but now that the war is
about to commence in earnest, I think that the troops are making better
time."

And so they were, my boy, so they were; for the heel of the first
rank's boots were almost on the line in less than an hour,--no
Confederacies being in sight.

Noticing a circle of Mackerel Officers a short distance in my rear, I
dismounted from Pegasus and walked thither for greater speed,
discovering that the brilliant staff were admiring the great equestrian
gambols of the new General of the Mackerel Brigade.

The new General is a dignified, middle-aged chap, my boy, with a face
which expresses many whiskers, and an eye to look you through and
through when your meaning is transparent. He is not quite two yards
high, has a head which looks like a lustrous apple-dumplin