In fact, my boy, notwithstanding the efforts of Captain Villiam Brown to tranquillize public feeling by seizing the telegraph office and railroad depot, telegraphing to everybody he knew for reënforcements, the excitement was steadily increasing, until word came from Company 3, Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade, that no enemy had been in sight at all. When the intelligence was brought to the General of the Mackerel Brigade, and as soon as the band had finished serenading him, he called for a fresh tumbler, and says he: "I may as well tell you at once, my children, that this whole matter is simply a part of my plan for bringing this unnatural war to a speedy termination. Company 3 retired by my design, and--and--in fact, my children," says the general, confidingly, "it's something you can't understand--it's strategy." Perhaps it was, my boy--perhaps it was; for there is more than one reason to believe that strategy means military shoes with the heels in front. Yours, cautiously, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER XLIX. NOTING THE ARCHITECTURAL EFFECTS OF THE GOTHIC STEED, PEGASUS, AND DESCRIBING THE MACKEREL BRIGADE'S SANGUINARY ENGAGEMENT WITH THE RICHMOND REBELS. WASHINGTON, D.C., June 8th, 1862. Once more, my boy, the summer sun has evoked long fields of bristling bayonets from the seed sown in spring tents, and the thunder of the shower is echoed by the roar of the scowling cannon. Onward, right onward, sweeps the Sunset Standard of the Republic, to plant its Roses and its Lilies on the soil where Treason has so long been the masked reaper; to epitaph with its eternal Violet the honored battle-graves of the heroic fallen, and to set its sleepless Stars above the Southern Cross in a new Heaven of Peace. In my voyage down the river, to witness the great battle for Richmond, I took my frescoed dog, Bologna, and my gothic steed, Pegasus. The latter architectural animal, my boy, has again occasioned an optical mistake. Being of a melancholy turn, and partaking somewhat of the tastes of the horrible and sepulchral German Mind, the gothic charger has peregrinated much in a churchyard near Washington, frequently standing for hours in that last resting-place, lost in profound mortuary contemplation, to the great admiration of certain vagrant crows in the atmosphere. On such occasions, my boy, his casual pace is, if possible, rather more _requiescat in_ "_pace_" than on ordinary marches. I was going after him in company with a religious chap from Boston, who is going down South to see about the contrabands being born again, when we caught sight of Pegasus, in the distance. The sagacious architectural stallion had just ascended the steps leading into the graveyard, my boy, and presented a gothic and pious appearance. The religious chap clutched my arm, and says he: "How beautiful it is, my fellow-sinner, to see that simple village church, resting like the spirit of Peace in the midst of this scene of war's desolation."