The Kernel tuk the hint rite off; but he sed Chase would never be President, for he wanted to be so bad that he acted all the time as if a bumble bee was stingin him, and that his flyin round so would kill him off, if nothin else. We then both sot down and went to studyin the figgers. I cifered with my slate, and the Kernel made chalk marks on his hat every time we got up to a million of dollars. Purty soon the Kernel's eyes began to look wild, and ses he, "Majer, where do we land next? Is she hedin up stream or side-ways? She'll go down, sure as thunder. Well, let her rip; she's been a sinkin consarn for years." I see at once that the Kernel was flighty. Chase's figgers had turned his hed, and he thought he was flat-botin agin on the Mississippi river. But he kept on ravin. Ses he, "Majer, knock that nigger off the bow of the bote; he's rite in the way of the pilot." Ses I, "Kernel, it ain't safe to hit a nigger in these days; Stanton will put me in Fort La Fayette." I thought this might bring the Kernel to his senses, but it didn't. Ses he, "There it goes, Majer, jest as I told you, rite on that snag. That nigger is to blame for the hull of it." I see it was no use, that the Kernel was nigh about stark mad, and so I said to him, ses I, "Let's put up this work to-night, an go to bed." He didn't want to, but I dragged him off, an he kept ravin' all the time, "That nigger has ruined me! There he comes--he is after me yet!" As soon as I got the Kernel in bed, I put a double set of mustard plasters on his feet, an then gave him a strong dose of my old remedy, elder-bark tea. I knew that would cure him, if anything on arth. Purty soon the sweat began to start, and the gripin in the bowels began. Jest as soon as this took place, it drawed all the disease out of his head, an the next mornin he was as bright as new dimes used to be when there was sich things. The fust thing the Kernel sed to me in the mornin was, ses he, "Majer, I hed an awful dream last nite." Ses I, "What was it?" "Wal," ses he, "I dreamt that the nigger had destroyed the Union." "Wal," ses I, "Kernel, you git nearer the truth in your dreams than you ginrally do when you are wide awake. If you will only have another dream, you will see the Abolishinists have killed the Union, and that the poor nigger is only the means that they have used to do it." The Kernel didn't say nothin, but looked down on the floor an whistled. Finally, he tuk out of his pocket one of Chase's new fifty-cent shinplasters, an ses he, "Majer, kin you tell me why this new currency has the _odor_ of nashinality about it?" "No," ses I, "Kernel, I don't see it." "Wal," ses he, "because it is _cented_ paper!" "Wal," ses I, "Kernel, now kin you tell me why that fifty-cent shinplaster is like the war?" Ses he, "Majer, you've got me there." "Wal," ses I, "the face is black, which means that we are fightin to free the nigger, and the back is red--for the blood--the price we are payin for it!"