The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers Volume Iii Part 31

"THE SOUTH.--BY A NORTHER.

"'Twas night, deep night, in the beautiful city of Richmond; and the chivalrous Mr. Faro was slowly wending his way through Broad street to the bosom of his Confederate family, when, suddenly, he was confronted by a venerable figure in rags, soliciting alms.

"'Out of my path, wretch!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the haughty Virginian, impatiently; and, tossing two thousand dollars ($2000) to the unfortunate mendicant, he attempted to pa.s.s on.

"The starving beggar was about to give way, and had drawn near the barrel which he carried on a wheelbarrow, for the purpose of adding to its contents the pittance just received, when the small amount of the latter seemed to attract his attention for the first time, and again he threw himself in the way of the miserly aristocrat.

"'Moses Faro,' he muttered, in tones of profound agitation, 'you have your sheds full ($000000000) of Southern Bonds, while one poor barrel full ($000) must supply me for a whole day; yet would I not exchange places with a man capable of insulting honest poverty as you have done this night.'

"The proud Virginian felt the rebuke keenly; and as he stood, momentarily silent, in the presence of the hapless victim of penury, he could not help remembering that he had, on that very morning, willingly given his youngest son five thousand dollars ($5000) to purchase a kite and some marbles. Greatly stricken in conscience, and heartily ashamed of his recent meanness, he turned to the suppliant, and said, kindly:

"'Give me your address, and to-morrow morning I will send you a cart full ($000) of means. I would give you more now, but I have only sixty thousand dollars ($60,000) about me, with which to pay for the pair of boots I now have on.'

"'Moses Faro,' responded the deeply-affected pauper, 'your n.o.ble charity will enable me to pay the nine thousand dollars ($9000) I owe for a week's board; and now let me ask, how goes our sacred cause?'

"'Never brighter,' answered the wealthy Confederate, with enthusiasm. 'We have succeeded to-day in forcing five more cities through the Yankee lines, and are dragging three whole Hessian armies to this city.'

"'Then welcome poverty for a while longer,' cried the beggar, pathetically; and so great was his exuberance of spirit at the news, that he resolved to spend five hundred dollars ($500) for a cigar in honor thereof.

"Mr. Faro walked thoughtfully on toward his residence, pondering earnestly the words he had listened to, and astonished to find how easily a rich man could give happiness to a poor one. After all, thought he, there is more contentment in poverty than in riches.

Show me the rich man who can boast the st.u.r.dy lightness of heart inspiring that hackneyed rhyme, the

"'CAROL OF THE CONFEDERATE BEGGAR.

"'Though but fifty thousand dollars Be the sum of all I own, Yet I'm merry with my begging, And I'm happy with my bone; Nor with any brother beggar Does my heart refuse to share, Though a thousand dollars only Be the most I have to spare.

"'I am shabby in my seven Hundred dollar hat of straw, And my dinner's but eleven Hundred dollars in the raw; Yet I hold my head the higher, That it owes the hatter least, And my scanty crumbs are sweeter Than the viands of a feast'.

"Humming to himself this simple lay of contented want, Mr. Faro reached his own residence, gave eighty dollars ($80) to a little boy on the sidewalk for blacking his boots, and entered the portals of the hospitable mansion. His wife met him in the hall, and, as they walked together into the parlor, he noticed that her expression was serious.

"'Have you heard the latest news, Moses?' she asked.

"'No,' returned the haughty Southerner.

"'Well,' said the lady, 'just before you came in, I gave Sambo a hundred and twelve dollars ($112) to get an evening paper, which says that the Confederate Government is about to seize all the money in the country, to pay the soldiers.'

"A gorgeous smile lit up the features of the chivalric Virginian, and he said:

"'Let them take both my shedsfull ($00000000); let them take it all! Sooner than submit, or consent to be Reconstructed, I would give my very life even, for the sake of the Confederacy!'

Mrs. Faro still looked serious.

"'Moses,' she said, with quivering lips, 'have you not got, hidden away somewhere, _a twenty-s.h.i.+lling gold-piece_ ($2,500,000)?'

"Ghastly pale turned the proud Confederate, and he could barely stammer,--

"'Ye-ye-yes.'

"'Well,' murmured the matron, 'it's the gold they intend to take, I reckon.'

"That was enough. Frantically tore Mr. Faro into the street; desperately raced he to the city limits; madly flew he past the pickets and sentinels; swiftly scoured he down the Boynton Plank Road. A Yankee bayonet was at his bosom.

"'Reconstruction!' shouted he.

"They took him before the nearest post-commandant, and he only said,--

"'Let me be Reconstructed.'"

Need the reader be informed that he is now in New York, looking for a house, and in great need of some financial aid to help him pay the rent of such a residence as he has always been accustomed to and cannot live without? Yes, far from home, family, and friends, he is now one of those long-suffering, self-sacrificing Union refugees from the South, whom it is a pleasure to a.s.sist, and whose manly opposition to the military despotism of the Confederacy commends them to our utmost liberality. He will accept donations in money, and this fact should be sufficient to make all loyal men eager to extend such pecuniary encouragement as may suffice to keep him above any necessity for exertion until the presidency of some Bank can be procured for him by the Christian Commission.

I may add, my boy, that any monetary contribution intended for this excellent man, may be directed to

Yours, patronizingly,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER CVII.

RECORDING THE LATEST DELPHIC UTTERANCES OF ONE WHOM WE ALL HONOR WITHOUT KNOWING WHY; AND RECOUNTING THE TRULY MARVELLOUS AFFAIR OF THE FORT BUILT ACCORDING TO TACITUS.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., March 29th, 1865.

It is a beautiful trait of our common American nature, my boy, that we should be stood-upon by fleshy Old Age, and find ourselves reduced to the mental condition of mangled infants thereby. It is an airy characteristic of our gentle national temperament, to let s.h.i.+rt-collared Old Age, of much alpaca pants, sit down on us and cough into our ears. It is a part of our social organization as a reverential people to be forever weighed-down in our spirits by the awful respectability of double-chinned Old Age, and the solemn satisfaction it displays at its elephantine meals.

Hence, my boy, when I tell you that the Venerable Gammon beamed hither from his residential Mugville last Sat.u.r.day, with a view to benefiting that wayward infant, his country, you will be prepared to learn that the populace fell upon their unworthy stomachs before him, and respectfully begged him to walk over their necks.

"My children," said the Venerable Gammon, with a fleshy smile, signifying that he had made them all, and yet didn't wish to seem proud,--"My children, this war is progressing just as I originally planned it, and will end successfully as soon as it terminates triumphantly. Behold my old friend, Phoebus," says the Venerable Gammon, pointing an adipose forefinger at the sun, with a patriarchal air of having benignantly invented that luminary, though benevolently permitting Providence to have all the credit, "it is not more certain that my warm-hearted friend Phoebus will rise in the yeast to-morrow morning than that the Southern Confederacy will not be capable of fighting a single additional battle after it shall have lost the ability to take part in another engagement."

Then the entire populace requested immediate leave to black the boots of their aged benefactor and idol, and seven-and-thirty indefatigable reporters, with pencils behind their ears, telegraphed to seven-and-thirty powerful morning journals, that the end of the rebellion might be looked for in about a couple of hours.

I don't mind revealing to you, as a curious fact, my boy, that no mortal man is able to understand how the Venerable Gammon has done anything at all in this war. In fact, I can't exactly perceive what earthly deed he has actually performed to make him preferable to George Was.h.i.+ngton; but it is generally inferred, from the size of his watch-seals and the lambency of his spectacles, that he has in some way been more than a parent to the country; and the thousands now buying some beneficent Petroleum stock, which he has to sell, are firmly convinced that its sale is positively calculated to forever benefit the human race.

Oh! that I were Ovid, or Anacreon, to describe fittingly the recent little wedding entertainment, at which this excellently-aged teacher and preserver of his species was fatly present, diffusing permission for all mankind to be happy and not mind him. After beaming parentally upon the officiating Mackerel chaplain, with a benignity inseparable from the idea that all clergymen were the work of his hands, he took the dimpled chin of the bride between his thumb add forefinger, and says he:

"My children, I am an old, old man; but may ye be happy." Here he kissed the bride. "Yes, my children," says the venerable Gammon, with a blessing on the world in every tone of his b.u.t.tery voice, "I am far down in the vale of years; but may ye be very happy." And he kissed the bride. "Still, my children," says the Venerable Gammon, with steaming spectacles, "I would be willing to be even older, if my country desired it; but may ye be forever happy." So he kissed the bride. "Oh!" says the Venerable Gammon, abstractedly placing a benefactor's arm around her waist, and looking benevolently about the room as though consenting to its possession of four walls,--"Oh!" says he, "it is a privilege to be old for such a cause as this; but may ye be supremely happy." At this juncture he kissed the bride. "I am old enough," says the venerable Gammon, "to be your brother." And he kissed every young woman there.

Whereupon it was the general impression that an apostle was present; and when the bridegroom subsequently hinted, in a disagreeable whisper, that two bottles of port were enough to confuse the mind of a Methuselah himself, there was a wonderful unanimity among the ladies as to the probable misery of the bride's future life.

But wherefore, O, Eros, dost thou detain me in such scenes as these, while the hoa.r.s.e trumpet of bully Mars calls me to the field of strategic glory? Hire an imaginary horse, my boy, at a fabulous livery-stable, and, in fancy, trot beside me as I urge my architectural steed, the Gothic Pegasus, toward the Mackerel lines in front of Paris.

Believing that you are entirely familiar with the very fat works of C.

Tacitus, and minutely remember Book II. of his Annals, let me draw your attention to that fort Aliso which he describes as being built upon the River Luppia by Drusus, father of Germanicus, and const.i.tuting the commencement of a chain of posts to the Rhine. Just such a work has been erected on the sh.o.r.es of Duck Lake by Mackerel genius, as the key to a long line of remarkable mud-works. It is modelled after Aliso, chiefly because that work was notorious for being near the Ca.n.a.l of Drusus; and the whole world knows that ca.n.a.l-digging is inseparable from all our national strategy.

Fort Bledandide is the name of the Mackerel inst.i.tution destined to receive immortality in Mr. Tacitus Greeley's exciting History of this distracting war; but to me belongs the earlier privilege of enabling a moral weekly journal to confuse its readers with the first reliable report of the marvellous battle of Fort Bledandide.