The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers Volume I Part 34

"Consider me reconstructed."

As that was all the Const.i.tution asked, of course there was no more to be done, and the Orange County Howitzers returned to their original position in the mire, the English gentlemen remarking that the appearance and discipline of our troops were satisfactory to Albion.

Fighting according to the Const.i.tution, my boy, is such an admirable way of preventing carnage, that some doctor ought to take out a patent for it as a cheap medicine.

Yours to come, and

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER XL.

RENDERING TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA, WITH A REMINISCENCE OF HOBBS & DOBBS, ETC.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., April 18th, 1862.

Having a leisure hour at my disposal, my boy, and being reminded of infatuating crinoline by the reception of certain bird-like notes in chirography strongly resembling the exquisite edging on delicious pantalettes, I turn my attention to that beautiful creation which is fearfully and wonderfully maid, and wears distracting gaiters.

Woman, my boy, at her worst, is a source of real happiness to the sterner s.e.x. There's a chap in the Mackerel Brigade who got very melancholy one day after receiving a letter from home, wherein he was affectionately called "a unnatural and wicious creetur" for not sending his better-half a new dress and some hair-pins. Seeing his affliction, and divining its cause, another Mackerel stepped up to him, and says he:

"Is it the old woman which is on a tare?"

The married chap groaned, and says he:

"She's mad as a hornet. I do believe," says the married chap, turning very pale, "that she'll take away my night-key, and teach my babes to call me the Old File."

"Well," says the comforting Mackerel, "then why did you get married?

Why didn't you stay a single bachelor like me, and enjoy the pursuit of happiness in the Fire Department?"

"Happiness!" says the married chap, "why it was expressly to enjoy happiness that I wedded. Step this way," says the married chap, with a horrible smile, leading his consoler aside, "ain't the women of America mortal?"

"Yes," says the Mackerel thoughtfully.

"And don't they die?"

"Yes," says the Mackerel. "That is to say," added the Mackerel, contemplatively, "they sometimes die when there's new and expensive tombstones in fas.h.i.+on."

"Peter Perkins!" says the married chap, with a smile of wild bliss, "I wouldn't miss the happiness I shall feel when my angel returns to her native hevings, for the sake of being twenty bachelors. No!" says the married chap, clutching his bosom, "I've lived on the thought of that air bliss ever since the morning my female pardner threw my box of long-sixes out of the window, and called in the police because I brought a waluable terrier home with me." Here the married chap uncorked his canteen and eyed it with speechless fury.

Tears came to the eyes of the unwomantic Mackerel; he extended his hand, and says he:

"Say no more, Bobby--say no more. If you ain't got the correck idea of Heaven there's no such place on the map."

I give you this touching conversation between two of nature's n.o.blemen, my boy, that you may appreciate that beautiful dispensation of Providence which endows woman with the slighter failings of humanity, yet gives her the power to brighten the mind of inferior man with glorious visions of joy beyond the grave.

My arm has been strengthened in this war, my boy, by the inspiration of woman's courage, and aided by her almost miraculous foresight. Only yesterday, a fair girl of forty-three summers, thoughtfully sent me a box, containing two gross of a.s.sorted fish-hooks, three cook-books, one dozen of Tubbses best spool-cotton, three door-plates, a package of patent geranium-roots, two yards of Brussels carpet, Rumford's ill.u.s.trated work on Perpetual Intoxication, ten bottles of furniture-polish, and some wall-paper. Accompanying these articles, so valuable to a soldier on the march, was a note, in which the kind-hearted girl said that the things were intended for our sick and wounded troops, and were the voluntary tributes of a loyal and dreamy-souled woman. I tried a dose of the furniture-polish, my boy, on a chap that had the measles, and he has felt so much like a sofa ever since, that a coroner's jury will sit on him to-morrow.

The remainder of this susceptible young creature's note, my boy, was calculated to move a heart of stone. She asked if it hurt much to be killed, and said she should think the President might sue Jeff Davis, or commit habeas corpus or some other ridiculous thing, to stop this dreadful, spirit-agonizing war. She said that her deepest heart-throbs and dream-yearnings were for the crimson-consecrated Union, and that she had lavished her most harrowing hope-sobs for its heaven-triumph.

She said that she had a friend, named Smith, in the army, and wished I could find him out, and tell him that the human heart, though repining at the absence of the beloved object, may be coldly proud as a scornful statute to the stranger's eye, but pines like a soul-murdered water-lily on the lovely stream of its twilight-brooding contemplations.

Anxious to oblige her, my boy, I asked the General of the Mackerel Brigade if he knew a soldier "of the name of Smith?"

The General thought awhile, and says he:

"Not one. There are many of the name of Sa-mith," says the general, screening his eye from the sun with a bottle, "and the Smythes are numerous; but the Smiths all died as soon as the Prince of Wales came to this country."

This is an age of great aristocracy, my boy, and the name of Smith is confined to tombstones. I once knew a chap named Hobbs, who made k.n.o.bs, and had a partner named Dobbs; and he never could get married until he changed his t.i.tle; for what sensitive and delicately-nerved female would marry a man whose business-card read, "Try Hobbs & Dobbs' k.n.o.bs?"

Finally, he called himself De Hobbs, and wedded a Miss Podger--p.r.o.nounced Po-gshay. After that, he cut his partner, ordered his friends to cease calling him Jack, and in compliance with the wishes of his wife's family, got out a business-card like this:

JACQUES DE HOBBS, TRY HIS DOOR-PERSUADERS.

But, to return to the women of America, there was one of them came out to our camp not long ago, my boy, with six Saratoga trunks full of moral reading for our troops. She was distributing the cheerful works among the veterans, when she happened to come across Private Jinks, who had just got his rations, and was swearing audibly at the collection of wild beasts he had found in one of his biscuits.

"Young man," says she, in a vinegar manner, "do you want to be d.a.m.ned?"

Private Jinks reflected a moment, and says he:

"Really, mem, I don't know enough about horses to say."

The literary agent was greatly shocked, but recovered in time to hand the warrior a small book, and told him to read it and be saved.

It was a small and enlivening volume, my boy, written by a missionary lately served up for breakfast by the Emperor of Glorygoolia, and ent.i.tled "The Fire that Never is Quenched."

Jinks looked at the book, and says he:

"What district is that fire in?"

The daughter of the Republic bit off a small piece of cough candy, and says she:

"It's down below, young man, where you bid fair to go."

"And will it never be put out?" says Private Jinks.

The deeply-affected crinoline shook her head until all her combs rattled, and says she:

"No, young man; it will burn, and burn, young man."

"Then I'm safe enough!" says Private Jinks, slapping his knee; "for I'm a member of Forty Hose, and if that air fire is to keep burning, they'll have to have a paid Fire Department down there, and shut us fellows out."

The daughter of the Republic instantly left him, my boy; and when next I saw her, she was arguing with one of the chaplains, who pretended to believe that firemen sometimes went to Heaven.

Woman, my boy, is an angel in disguise; and if she had wings what a rise there would be in bonnets!

Yours, for the next Philharmonic,