Chapter 124
Not to sicken you, my boy, with too much of such heart-rending slaughter, let me say that a dense cloud of sulphurous smoke soon entirely veiled the doomed City of Paris, into which the strategical Mackerels continued for hours to pour such torrents of lead as no number of windows could stand. Finally, as night approached, a person of black extraction, with wool on the brain, emerged from the cloud quite close to Villiam, and says he:
"De place hab surrender, sah."
"Ah!" says Villiam, pulling out his ruffles, "is the conflick too much for the scorpions?"
The faithful black arranged a silver cake-basket more firmly under his coat, and says he:
"Dey's all gone over Jordan."
Wild were the cheers that rent the air at this intelligence, and right quickly were our national troops marching into the bar-room of captured Paris, to the inspiring strains of "Drops of Brandy," from the night-key bugle of the Mackerel band. Our distracted banner, too, was just being raised triumphantly upon the roof, when there suddenly emerged, from the shadow of the rear-guard, Miss P. Hen, leaning trustfully upon the arm of the Conservative Kentucky Chap!
"Now," says she, vivaciously, "is the very moment for the President to save our bleeding and bankrupt people, by paying four hundred millions of dollars to the sunny South for her losses in this war, and offering her such terms as may induce her to make that peace which is absolutely necessary to close the most accurate History of the War now sold to subscribers only."
Pause, my boy, ere you execrate the venerable Miss P. Hen; for there is more than one fidgety old lady tendering advice to the Government at this crisis; and the sisterhood is not without members who wear your own style of costume.
Yours, carefully,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER CIX.
WHICH ENDETH THE THIRD VOLUME OF THIS INEXPRESSIBLY VERACIOUS HISTORY OF THE WAR; AND SHOWETH HOW A GREAT REPUBLIC FINALLY OVERCAME ITS SURPa.s.sINGLY MENDACIOUS FOES, AND HOW IT EVINCES ITS UNSPEAKABLE GRAt.i.tUDE TO PROVIDENCE FOR SUCH A VICTORY.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., April 11th, 1865.
Look, my boy, upon the east wall of my luxurious presence-chamber, and mark how I have maliciously pasted thereon a map of besotted Europe; with all its capitals, rivers, mountains, and inland puddles laid down with an accuracy and mult.i.tudinosity to forever enlighten and utterly confound every sniffing little schoolboy-geographer in the land. What a shapeless chunk of inferior dirt is Europe! How like a minute and feeble skiptail does it appear, when compared with our own gigantic straddlebug of a country! Yet has the skiptail ventured to interfere offensively in the private affairs of the straddlebug; and the interference, and the private affairs, and the possible upshot of the whole matter, remind me forcibly of a spirited little event which once occurred in the Sixth Ward.
The male and female Michael O'Korrigan, my boy, occupied a s.p.a.cious apartment on the fine, airy, eighth floor of the sumptuous Maison Mulligan in that celebrated Ward, and for several years the course of their true love ran so smoothly that it became hopelessly insipid and exasperating to all the old maids for blocks around. Nothing was ever equal to the peaceful unity of the male and female O'Korrigan; and did Michael find it necessary, in the course of some friendly discussion with a neighbor on the stairs, to call for a hatchet till he broke the ugly nose of the spalpeen, it was the wife of his bosom that handed him his own bit of a stick, and joined in the argument herself with a poker for a referee. But nothing's perfect in this world except the wisdom of owls and Congressmen, and Mrs. O'Korrigan's military virtues and wholesome command of her husband had the slight drawback of a const.i.tutional taste for poteen. Michael expostulated with her by the hair, and remonstrated with her by the shoulders, and plead with her over the head; but all to no purpose; and he was greatly a.s.sisted and comforted by a bit of a preacher named Father O'Tod, who took care of everybody's virtue except his own. It was Father O'Tod that sat down beside her quite pious and comfortable, and
"Ailey," says he, "it's clane disgusted I am at heart," says he, "to see a wake crature of the hen s.e.x," says he, "a-cackling over a baste of a black bottle as if it was a fresh egg," says he. "And Ailey," says he, "if your husband was anything but a wake-minded bouchal of a man,"
says he, "it's with a bit of crab-thorn that he'd be persuadin' ye to give it up for good," says he.
"Oh, sorra the day," says she, "that I'm not behoolden to yer riverence," says she, "for such illigant advice," says she; "but it's meself that's accountable to somebody else than yerself and Michael O'Korrigan," says she, "for what I do," says she. "Do ye mind that, Father O'Tod?" says she. "And when I'm afther takin' a drop for the good of me health," says she, "I don't bother any one," says she; "but stay shut up in my own room," says she, "and only ask to be let alone,"
says she.
Now it chanced that Mr. O'Korrigan, being invited by Father O'Tod, and especially aggrieved by having one of his best Sunday shoes coolly appropriated as a sort of fanciful leathern case for the aforesaid black bottle, finally resolved to at least recapture his property, and, mayhap, spill the poteen. So he placed the hair of his head in Mrs.
O'Korrigan's left hand, and sc.r.a.ped his nose against the nails of her right, and was enjoying himself very much, when Father O'Tod came in, and
"Michael agrah," says he, "it's spaichless with horrors I am," says he, "to see ye brawling with yer own wife," says he, "and she a woman,"
says he.
"The marcy of Heaven on me!" says Mike, says he; "but isn't it yer own self," says he, "that's been advisin' me by the year," says he, "to stop her poteen?" says he.
"It's not the desthruction of the poteen yer after at all," says Father O'Tod, says he; "but only to wrinch from her," says he, "an owld brogan," says he, "that ye'd be as well without," says he.
Just at this moment Mr. O'Korrigan managed to get possession of the brogan referred to, and was commencing to use it most potently as an instrument of wholesome matrimonial correction, when the scuffle displaced the unfortunate black bottle from the pocket of Mrs.
O'Korrigan, and it fell to the floor and--broke into fifty pieces.
"It's accident that did that," says Father O'Tod, says he, "and not yerself at all, Michael O'Korrigan," says he; "and it's not myself,"
says he, "that'll give aither of ye pardon," says he. "But I'm l'anin'
to Ailey," says he, "and it's ma.s.ses I'll say for her," says he, "if she's bate to death," says he.
"Ailey, avourneen," says Mike, says he, "the bottle's broke," says he, "and I've got me brogan," says he, "and ye may keep the rest," says he, "if ye'll make up," says he.
"Michael, darlint," says she, "ye can place yer big mout' in the middle of me faychures," says she; "but as for Father O'Tod," says she, "it's achin' I am to comb his hypocritical hair," says she, "with a poker,"
says she.
"Ailey, me angel," says Mike, says he, "it'll be showin' our grat.i.tude to Saint Payter," says he, "that we an't both kilt intirely," says he, "lavin' aich other orphans," says he, "if we just slather the owld humbug together," says he.
So they both fell upon Father O'Tod with a heartiness not to be described, and that excellent and neutral old gentleman was much mussed in his linen.
Far be it from me, my boy, to say that combined Europe, and especially the step-mother country, is at all like Father O'Tod, or that Slavery in the remotest degree resembles a small black bottle; but interference in the quarrels of married folks is apt to excite the liveliest enmity of both parties, and two-against-one has been known to result quite spiritedly therefrom.
Therefore, let the skiptail of Europe beware! for even I, an humble historian and no warrior, am filled with that spirit of defiance to everything across the Atlantic which might serve to inspire a brigadier, the editor of an able morning journal, a fierce turkey-c.o.c.k, or any other type of matchless valor. One week ago, this American breast of mine was wild for the immediate redemption of lovely Ireland, by reason of the marvellous and triumphant capture of Paris by the thrice-valiant Mackerel Brigade; and to-day such an accession of national triumph stares all through the columns of our more stentorian morning journals, that I demand the immediate disenthrallment from foreign tyrants of Hungary, Poland, Venetia, Mexico, Canada, Jersey City, and the Guano Islands.
Munchausen, my boy, has surrendered! That mirror of chivalry and hollow-eyed wanderer in a forest of whiskers has yielded to his n.o.ble desire for a piece--of something to eat, and gracefully permitted himself and his command to be wooed from their guiding star,--starvation.
Immediately after the unprecedented battle for Paris, and while yet the agitated Miss P. Hen and divers enterprising political chaps who had followed our troops were organizing a Republican caucus in the bar-room of the captured capital, the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade pushed on after the unseemly Confederacies, with a view to further carnage. Not a stump of a tree was seen but it was at once taken for Mr. Davis himself, and had the direful Orange County Howitzers concentrated upon it; yet such dangers did not deter our venerable Mackerel boys from their a.s.signed pursuit, and ere long their glittering spectacles surrounded a goodly swamp, wherein were perceptible the caitiff Confederacies up to their chins in the sacred soil. With only their heads above the mud, these sons of chivalry looked not unlike a vast cabbage-patch romantically viewed by twilight; while far up the vegetable vista glowed the eyes of Captain Munchausen, like those of an irascible Thomas cat who sees a dog down the lane.
Pitching his tent in a spot where no vagrant stone could reach it, the General of the Mackerel Brigade took off his coat and vest, rolled up the legs of his inexpressibles, and commenced the following
CORRESPONDENCE.
MUNCHAUSEN, _Southern Confederacy_:
"SIR,--The result of the last strategical combat between us must convince you of the hopelessness of further military confusion in this country. I feel that it is so, and consider it my duty to s.h.i.+ft from myself the responsibility of further carnage by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the sunny South known as the Southern Confederacy.
"THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.
("Green Seal.")
You may observe, my boy, that the remark: "I feel that it is so," does not make the strongest kind of connection with the preceding sentence; but great warriors are apt to be shaky in their rhetoric; and the Confederacy responded thus:
"GEN. MACK. BRIG.:
"SIRRAH,--Though repelling with scorn the vandal insinuation that further military confusion on my part is hopeless, I agree with you as to the stoppage of further carnage, and desire to know upon what terms you will haul the celebrated Southern Confederacy out of this swamp.
"MUNCHAUSEN X his mark."
(This chivalrous manner of signing a name with a Cross is a knightly expression of profound piety, descended from the ancient crusaders to the Southern chivalry of the present day.)
To the above epistle the General thus replied:
"MUNCHAUSEN, _Southern Confederacy_: