"Yes," says the chap, mournfully, "them air shoes has demoralized Company 3, which is advancing back to Paris at double-quick. Them shoes," says the chap, "which was furnished by the sons of Revolutionary forefathers by a contractor, at only twenty-five dollars a pair for the sake of the Union, has caused a fatal mistake. They got so ragged with being exposed to the wind, that when Company 3 hastily put them on for an advance on Richmond, they got the heels in front and have been going in the wrong direction ever since." "Where did you leave your comrades?" says Villiam. "At Joneses Court House," says the chap. "Ah!" says Villiam, "is that a healthy place?" "No," says the chap, "it's very unhealthy--I was drunk all the time I was there." "I see," says Villiam, with great agitation, "my brave comrades are in a tight place. Let all the newspaper correspondents be ordered to leave Paris at once," says Villiam to his adjutants, "and we'll take measures for a second uprising of the North." When it became generally known, my boy, that Company 3, Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade, were falling back across Duck Lake, there was great agitation in Government circles, and the general of the Mackerel Brigade prepared to call out all persons capable of bearing arms. "The Constitution is again in danger," says the general, impulsively, "and we must appeal to the populace." "Ah!" says Villiam, "it would also aid our holy cause to call out the women of America. For the women of America," says Villiam, advisedly, "are capable of baring arms to any extent." "No!" says the general. "Woman's place in this war is beside the couch of the sick soldier. Thunder!" says the general, genially, "it's enough to make us fonder of our common nature to see the devotion of women to the invalid volunteer. As I was passing through the hospital just now," says the general, feelingly, "I saw a tender, delicate woman acting the part of a ministering angel to a hero in a hard ague. She was fanning him, my friend--she was fanning him." "Heaven bless her!" says Villiam, with streaming eyes; "and may she never be without a stove when she has a fever. I really believe," says Villiam, glowingly, "that if woman found her worst enemy, even, burning to death, she would heap coals of fire upon his head." Villiam's idea of heaping coals of fire, my boy, is as literal as was the translation of Enoch. On learning of the repulse from Richmond, all the Southern Union men of Paris commenced to remember that the rebels are our brethren, and that this war was wholly brought about by the fiendish abolitionists. "Yes!" says a patriotic chap from Accomac, sipping the oath loyally, "the Abolitionists brought this here war about, and I have determined not to support it. Our slaves read the _Tribune_, and have learned so much from military articles in that paper that the very life of the South depended upon separation."