"Aisey, me boy," says the other sentinel, straightening the barrel of his musket and holding it very straight to keep the fatal ball from rolling out, "it's the sperits of all our pravious descindants coming to ax us, was our grandmother the Saycretary of the Navy." Right onward came the multitude, their spectacles glistening in the sun like so many exasperated young planets, and their umbrellas and carpet-bags swinging like the pendulums of so many infuriated clocks. Pretty soon the advance guard, who was a chap in a white neck-tie and a hat resembling a stove-pipe in reduced circumstances, poked a sentinel in the ribs with his umbrella, and says he: "Where's Congress?" "Is it Congress ye want?" says the sentinel. "Yessir!" says the chap. "Yessir. These are friends of mine--ten thousand six hundred and forty-two free American citizens. We must see Congress. Yessir!--dammit. How about that tax-bill? We come to protest against certain features _in_ that bill." "Murther an turf!" says the sentinel, "is it the taxes all of them ould chaps is afther blaming?" "Yessir!" says the chap, hysterically jamming his hat down over his forehead and stabbing himself madly under the arm with his umbrella. "Taxes is a outrage. Not _all_ taxes," says the chap with sudden benignity, "but the taxes which fall upon us. Why don't they tax them as is able to pay, without oppressing us ministers, editors, merchants, lawyers, grocers, peddlers, and professors of religion?" Here the chap turned very purple in the face, his eyes bulged greenly out, and says he: "Congress is a ass." "That's thrue for you," says the sentinel: "they ought to eximpt the whole naytion and tax the rest of it." The multitude then swarmed into Washington, my boy, and if they don't smother the Tax Bill, it will be because Congress is case-hardened. The remainder of the Mackerel Brigade being ordered to join the Conic Section at Accomac for an irresistible advance on Manassas, I mounted my gothic steed Pegasus on Tuesday morning. Pegasus, my boy, has greatly improved since I rubbed him down with Snobb's Patent Hair Invigorator, and his tail looks much less like a whisk-broom than it did at first. It is now fully able to maintain itself against all flies whatsoever. The general of the Mackerel Brigade rode beside me on a spirited black frame, and says he: "That funereal beast of yours is a monument of the home affections. Thunder!" says the general, shedding a small tear of the color of Scheidam Schnapps, "I never look at that air horse without thinking of the time I buried my first baby; its head is shaped so much like a small coffin." On reaching Accomac, my boy, we found Captain Villiam Brown at the head of the Conic Section of the Mackerel Brigade, dressed principally in a large sword and brass buttons, and taking the altitude of the sun with a glass instrument operated by means of a bottle.