On the occasion of my last visit to Yorktown, my boy, I found the Mackerel Brigade so well up in animal spirits that each chap was equal to a pony of brandy, and capable of capturing any amount of glass artillery. At the present time, my boy, the brigade is formed in the shape of a clam-shell, with the right resting on a beer wagon, and the left on a traveling free-lunch saloon. I was examining the new battery of the Orange County Howitzers--whose guns have such large touch-holes that the chaps keep their crackers and cheese in them when not in action--and was also overhearing the remarks of a melancholy Mackerel concerning what he wished to be done with his effects in case he should perish with old age before the battle commenced--when I beheld Captain Villiam Brown, approaching me on the most geometrical beast I ever saw--an animal even richer in sharp corners, my boy, than my own gothic steed, Pegasus. "Ha!" says Villiam, hastily swallowing something that brought tears to his eyes, and taking a bit of lemon-peel to clear his voice, "you are admiring my Arabian courser, and wondering whether it is one of the three presented to Secretary Seward by the Emperor of Egypt." "You speak truly, my Bayard," says I; "that superb piece of horseflesh looks like the original plan of the city of Boston--there's so many bisecting angles about him." "Ah!" says Villiam, with an agreeable smile, "in the words of the anthem of childhood-- "'The angles told me so.'" Villiam's idea of angels, my boy, constitutes a theory of theology in itself. "What call you the charger?" says I. "Euclid," says Villiam, pausing for a moment, to catch the gurgle of a canteen just reversed. "Ah!" says Villiam, recovering his presence of mind, "this here marvel of natural history is a guaranteed 2.40." "No!" says I. "Yes," says Villiam, calculatingly, "this superb animal is a sure 2.40--he cost me just Two dollars and Forty cents. But come with me," said Villiam, proudly, "and see the sharpshooter contingent I have just organized to aid in the suppression of this here unnatural rebellion." I followed the splendidly-mounted warrior, my boy, to a spot not far from the nearest point of the enemy's lines, where I found a lengthy Western chap polishing a rifle with a powerful telescope on the end of it. He had just been organized, and was preparing to make some carnage. "Now then, Ajack," said Villiam, classically, "let us see you pick off that Confederacy over there, which looks like a mere fly at this distance." The sinewy sharpshooter sprang to his feet, called a drummer-boy to hold his chew of tobacco, looked at the rebel gunner through his telescope, shut up the telescope, took aim with both eyes shut, turned away his head, and _fired_!