Chapter 54
PETERS ill.u.s.trated his a.s.sertion by suspending his watch from the bracket, under which it spun feebly for a moment. "At the very instant of my waking from a temporary slumber, I caught sight of this same repeater in the gla.s.s, and--why! what's this?"
In a moment every vestige of resentment had faded from the features of Mr. BOB PETERS, and he stood staring at the reflection of his watch in the gla.s.s with the look of a man in the last stage of wonder.
LIBBY timidly drew near and placed a hand on his arm.
"What's the matter, dear?"
"What time is it now by the repeater?" asked Mr. PETERS, excitedly, but without moving his eyes.
"Why, it's ten minutes past Ten," replied LIBBY, glancing at the face of the watch as it appeared in the mirror, and wondering what would come next.
"Look again!!" thundered Mr. PETERS.
"Why," repeated LIBBY, half-frightened, "it's ten minutes past Ten."
Mr. BOB PETERS deliberately took down his watch and pointed convulsively at its face with one finger. The time was ten minutes _of_ Ten!
Mr. PETERS' first act was to clasp the maiden to his bosom and kiss her unceremoniously. Then releasing her, he took two steps in a popular break-down and burst into a stentorian peal of laughter.
"I shall have to call Pa," said poor LIBBY.
"Not a bit of it!" shouted BOB, ceasing his Terpsich.o.r.eanism for a moment; "don't you see the joke? It's all in the looking-gla.s.s, my pet.
When I thought it was a quarter past Twelve and fled the residence, it was really a quarter _of_ Twelve--don't you see? The looking-gla.s.s _reversed the hands on the watch_!"
And so it was, _mon ami_. Hold your own time-piece with its face to a mirror, and you will "see the point."
But what can excuse that General who, after leading the whole country to expect that he would take Richmond in time for me to conclude this picture of Southern life, as I originally planned to do, now changes his base of operation in a strategic manner, and introduces a fizzle into romantic literature----
Here Smith-Brown, who happened to be awake, coughed intrusively, my boy, and says he:
"The fault is not the General's, my friend. The Secretary of War is alone to blame for it. He has killed literature."
How true was that speech, my boy. The Secretary is indeed responsible for this literary disaster, as well for everything else; and if he ever undertakes to stand on his own responsibility, he will find plenty of room to move about.
Yours, droopingly, ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER LV.
SETTING FORTH A NEW VILLAINY OF THE INSIDIOUS BLACK REPUBLICANS, AND DESCRIBING THE THRILLING CONSt.i.tUTIONAL BATTLE OF DUCK LAKE.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., July 12th, 1862.
Owing to the persistent stupidity of Congress and the hideously-treasonable machinations of the unscrupulous black republicans, my boy, the weather still continues very hot; and unless the thermometer falls very soon, an exhausted populace will demand an immediate change in the Cabinet. I am very warm, my boy--I am very warm; and when I reflect upon the agency of the abolitionists, who have brought this sort of thing about for the express purpose of injuring my Const.i.tution, I am impelled to ask myself: Did our revolutionary forefathers indeed expire in vain? O my country!
Such weather, my boy, is particularly trying to Sergeant O'Pake's friend,
THE IRISH PICKET.
I'm shtanding in the mud, Biddy, With not a spalpeen near, And silence, spaichless as the grave, Is all the sound I hear.
Me gun is at a showlder arms, I'm wetted to the bone, And whin I'm afther shpakin' out, I find meself alone.
This Southern climate's quare, Biddy, A quare and bastely thing, Wid Winter absint all the year, And Summer in the Spring.
Ye mind the hot place down below?
And may ye niver fear I'd dhraw comparisons--but then It's awful warrum here.
The only moon I see, Biddy, Is one shmall star, asth.o.r.e, And that's fornint the very cloud It was behind before; The watchfires glame along the hill That's swellin' to the south, And whin the sentry pa.s.ses them I see his oogly mouth.
It's dead for shlape I am, Biddy, And dramein shwate I'd be, If them ould rebels over there Would only lave me free; But when I lane against a shtump And shtrive to get repose, A musket ball he's comin' shtraight To hit me s.p.a.cious nose.
It's ye I'd like to see, Biddy, A shparkin' here wid me And then, avourneen, hear ye say, "Acushla--Pat--machree!"
"Och, Biddy darlint," then says I, Says you, "get out of that;"
Says I, "me arrum mates your waist,"
Says you, "be daycent, Pat."
And how's the pigs and ducks, Biddy?
It's them I think of, shure, That looked so innocent and shwate Upon the parlor flure; I'm shure ye're aisy with the pig That's fat as he can be, And fade him wid the best, because I'm towld he looks like me.
Whin I come home again, Biddy, A sargent tried and thrue, It's joost a daycent house I'll build And rint it chape to you.
We'll have a parlor, bedroom, hall, A duck-pond nately done, With kitchen, pig-pen, praty-patch, And garret--all in one
But, murther! there's a baste, Biddy, That's c.r.a.pin' round a tree, And well I know the crature's there To have a shot at me.
Now, Misther Rebel, say yere prayers, And howld yer dirthy paw, Here goes!--be jabers, Biddy dear, I've broke his oogly jaw!
I was talking some moments ago with a Regimental Surgeon, who has more patients on a monument than Shakspere ever dreamed about, and says he: "In consequence of the great number of troops now about this city, all the oxygen in the atmosphere is exhausted, and we are very warm. Had all these troops been sent to McClellan two weeks ago," says he, using his lancet to pick a dead fly out of his tumbler, "we might be able to keep cool now. There is a terrible responsibility on somebody's shoulders."
That's very true, my boy, and it's very warm.
There was a panic this morning in financial circles, owing to the frantic conduct of a gambling chap from the Senate, who has been saving up money to bet on the fall of Richmond, and was trying to put it out at interest. "I'll take seven per cent. for it the first year," says he, anxiously, "and leave it standing until national strategy comes to a head."
A broker took it for five years, my boy, with the privilege of extending the time after each fresh victory.
Speaking of victories, my boy, I was present at the recent series of triumphs by the Mackerel Brigade, on the left sh.o.r.e of Duck Lake, and witnessed a succession of feats calculated to culminate either in the fall of Richmond or the fall of the year.
From the head-quarters in the city of Paris to the brink of Duck Lake, the Mackerels were drawn up in gorgeous line of battle, their bayonets resembling somewhat an uncombed head of steel hair, and their noses looking like a wavy strip of summer sunset. By their last great stragetical manoeuvre, they had lured the Southern Confederacy to court its own destruction by flanking them at both ends of the line, and they were only waiting for the master-mind to give them the signal.
Samyule Sa-mith advanced from this place in the staff as I rode up, and says he:
"Comrades, the General depends on you to precede him to glory. We had hoped," says Samyule, feelingly, "to have the company of two French counts in this day's slaughter; but those two n.o.ble Gauls had not time to wait, as they desired to visit the Great Exhibition in London."
These remarks were well received, my boy; and when the order was given for Company 3, Regiment 5, to detour to the left, it would have been promptly obeyed but for an unforeseen incident. Just as Captain Villiam Brown was about to break line for the purpose, an aged chap came das.h.i.+ng down from a First Family country-seat near by, and says he to the General of the Mackerel Brigade:
"I demand a guard for my premises immediately. My wife," says he, with dignity, "has just been making a custard-pie for the sick Confederacies in the hospital, and as she has just set it out to cool near where my little boy shot one of your vandals this morning, she is afraid it might be taken by your thieving mudsills when they came after the body.
I, therefore, demand a guard for my premises, in the name of the Const.i.tution of our forefathers."