"My children, though this strawberry festival is ostensibly for the purpose of encouraging fruit culture by the United States of America, it has yet a deeper purpose. The democratic party," says the general, paternally, "is about to be born again, and it is time to make preparation for the next Presidential election in 1865. I must go to Albany and Syracuse, and see the State Conventions; after which I must attend to the re-organization of the party in New York city. Then I go to Pennsylvania to do stump duty for a year; and from thence, to--" Here a serious chap, who had taken rather too much Strawberry Festival, looked up, and says he: "But how about the war all that time?" "The war!--the war!" says the general, thoughtfully. "Thunder!" says the general, with such a start that he spilt some of his Festival, "I'd really forgotten all about the war!" "Hum!" says the serious chap, gloomily, "you're worth millions to a suffering country--_you_ are." "Flatterer!" says the general blandly. "Yes," says the chap, "you're worth millions--with a hundred per cent off for cash." _In vino veritas_ is a sage old saying, my boy, and I take it to be a free translation of the Scripture phrase, "In spirit and in truth." Our brigadiers are so frequently absent-minded themselves, my boy, that they are not particularly absent-minded by the rest of the army. Upon quitting the Strawberry Festival I returned post-haste again to Paris, where I arrived just in time to start with Captain Bob Shorty and a company from the Conic Section of the Mackerel Brigade on a foraging expedition. We went to look up a few straw-beds for the feeding of the Anatomical Cavalry horses, my boy, and the conservative Kentucky chap went along to see that we did not violate the Constitution nor the rights of man. "It's my opinion, comrade," says Captain Bob Shorty, as we started out--"it's my opinion, my Union ranger, that this here unnatural war is getting worked down to a very fine point, when we can't go out for an armful of forage without taking the Constitution along on an ass. I think," says Captain Bob Shorty, "that the Constitution is as much out of place here as a set of fancy harness would be in a drove of wild buffaloes." Can such be the case, my boy--can such be the case? Then did our Revolutionary forefathers live in vain. Having moved along in gorgeous cavalcade until about noon, we stopped at the house of a First Family of Virginia who were just going to dinner. Captain Bob Shorty ordered the Mackerels to stack arms and draw canteens in the front-door yard, and then we entered the domicil and saluted the domestic mass-meeting in the dining-room. "We come, sir," says Bob, addressing the venerable and high-minded Chivalry at the head of the table, "to ask you if you have any old straw-beds that you don't want, that could be used for the cavalry of the United States of America."