[Illustration: [TELEGRAM FROM ANDREW JOHNSON, MILITARY GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE, TO S. C. MERCER, EDITOR OF THE “NASHVILLE DAILY UNION.”]] WASHINGTON, April 28, 1863. To S. C. MERCER, Editor of the _Nashville Daily Union_: Private. Your labors are highly appreciated out of Tennessee. Go on as you have done unfaltering in the work you have commenced. The Union Club of Nashville is doing much good. Their proceedings are looked to with much interest. I hope their policy will be sound and their purposes decided. I have got things straightened out, I hope for the better. I will be in Nashville soon. ANDREW JOHNSON. THE TWO SINGERS. Two singers sat on New Year’s eve By the blaze of a flickering fire. “The old year is burning out,” said one “Like the embers of our own life’s fire; As the fire’s blaze are our passing days, As the year shall our lives be o’er; Let us sing a rhyme to the passing year Ere we shall rhyme no more.” The elder rhymer, heavy of heart, Cried “Life is a thankless task. Its loves and its hate, its Church and State, Are only a hollow mask. Honor, and love, and rank and fame, Are chaff and idle words, And the schemes of men and the hopes of youth Are the chatter of silly birds. “Thus runs my rhyme:--The Ferryman Time With his ever-waning glass, Has laid on his bier another year And sung his Midnight Mass. From the oak wood dim rose a funeral hymn As earth bewailed the dead, And the seas made moan through every zone As the souls to Judgment fled. “The Ferryman stands on the sable sands Of the desolate Stygian stream; Not a starry eye from the stormy sky Shoots down one cheerful beam, But a hopeless wail filled the winter gale As the phantom guests rushed in, And fear and despair, and doubt were there, Hopes baffled, and woe and sin. “Ambition told how his palace fell Whose turrets braved the clouds, His royal guests changed their courtly robes For pale and ghostly shrouds. His banquet hall is tenantless, Unstrung is the minstrel’s viol-- Not a sound to greet but the pendulum’s beat Of the lone monotonous dial. “Genius proclaimed how folly’s scorn Robbed his nights and days of rest, And the only food of his eagle brood Was the life-blood of his breast. Bright were the gleams that lit his dreams, But ah! when he awoke His light was dead, his vision fled, And hope and heart were broke. “Pale as the light of an Eastern night Straying through orange bowers, Comes the love-crazed maid, Ophelia sad, White-robed and crowned with flowers The essence she of purity, Born for love’s pure caress, But madness quenched her soul’s desire In utter wretchedness.