Sixty-three was a dark year, and the President might well say on this typical incident, during a time there was little marrying, it is for once a pleasure to _preside_. * * * * * ON THE LORD'S SIDE. On a pastor assuring the President that "the Lord is on our side!" he replied: "I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side." * * * * * "TO CANAAN!" This hymn plays quite a part in the music of the Civil War. There is a negro variation--"Canaan's fair and happy land," given to the old hymn, "Canaan's happy shore," which, better known by its chorus: "Say, brothers, will you meet us?" and turned by the soldiers into the grand "John Brown's body's moldering in the grave, but his soul is marching on," was paraphrased by Julia Ward Howe into a "battle hymn." And Holmes wrote "To Canaan," relative to the first levy. And to top these, the Southerners had a parody on the "Old John Brown," also called "Lincoln Going to Canaan." * * * * * "GOING TO CANAAN!" Although the South is a poetic country, no bard wrote any "Marseillaise Hymn" on that side. One of the few effusions bidding tolerably for publicity was "Lincoln Going to Canaan," a parody on the numerous negro camp-meeting lays in which Lincoln was hailed as the coming Moses. This burlesque was laid before Mr. Lincoln, he taking the grim relish in hits at him, caricatures and sallies, which great men never spurn. "Going to Canaan," he (is reported to have) said. "Going to _cane 'em,_ I expect!" * * * * * THE FOX APPOINTED PAYMASTER. The President came into the telegraph-office of the White House, laughing. He had picked up a child's book in his son "Tad's" room and looked at it. It was a story of a motherly hen, struggling to raise her brood to lead honest and useful lives; but in her efforts she was greatly annoyed by a mischievous fox. She had given him many lectures on his wicked ways, and--said the President: "I thought I would turn over to the finis, and see how they came out. This is what it said: "'And the fox became a good fox, and was appointed paymaster in the army.' I think it very funny that I should have appointed him a paymaster. I wonder who he is?" Such inability to distinguish one officer as "good" does not speak highly for the eradication of the soldiers' prejudice for the gentry.--(Superintendent Tinker.) * * * * * RISKING THE DICTATORSHIP.