Company 3, Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade, started for an advance on Richmond yesterday, and by a forced march got within three miles of it. Another march brought them within five miles of the place; and the last despatch stated that they had but ten miles to go before reaching the rebel capital. Military travel, my boy, is like the railroad at the West, where they had to make chalk marks on the track to see which way the train was going. Yours, on time, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER XLVII. INTRODUCING A POEM BASED UPON AN IDEA THAT IS IN VIOLET--A POEM FOR WHICH ONE OF THE WOMEN OF AMERICA IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE. WASHINGTON, D.C., May 24th, 1862. One of the Northern women of America, my boy, has sent me a note, for the express purpose of expressing her hatred of the Southern Confederacy. She says, my boy, that the Confederacy is a miserable man, only fit for pecuniary dishonesty; and that even the gentle William Shakspeare couldn't help revealing the peculiar failing of the Floydulent section when he spoke so feelingly of "The sweet South, That breathes upon a bank of Violets, _Stealing_ and giving odor." A fair hit, my boy--a fair hit; and sorry should I be to let the sweet South breathe upon any kind of a bank in which I had a deposit. Speaking of violets; the woman of America sent one of those pretty flowers in her note; and, as I looked upon it, I thought how fit it was to be THE SOLDIER'S EPITAPH. The woodlands caught the airy fire upon their vernal plumes, And echoed back the waterfall's exultant, trilling laugh, And through the branches fell the light in slender golden blooms To write upon the sylvan stream the Naiad's epitaph. On either side the sleeping vale the mountains swelled away, Like em'ralds in the mourning ring that circles round the world And through the flow'r-enamel'd plain the river went astray, Like scarf of lady silver'd o'er around a standard furled. The turtle wooed his gentle mate, where thickest hung the boughs, While round them fell the blossoms plucked by robins' wanton bills; And on its wings the zephyr caught the music of his vows, To waft a strain responsive to the chorus of the hills. 'Twas in a nook beside the stream where grapes in clusters fell, And twixt the trees the swaying vines were lost in leafy showers, That fauns and satyrs, tamed to rest beneath the noonday spell, Gave silent ear and witness to the meeting of the flowers. The glories of the fields were there in summer's bright array, The virgins of the temple vast where Noon to Ev'ning nods, To crown as queen of all the rest whose bosom should display The signet of a mission blest, the cipher of the gods.