Matters being thus rendered pleasant, my boy, we quickly finished the simple meal; and as Captain Bob Shorty warded off the carving-knife just thrown at him by the Chivalry's little son, he turned to the female Confederacy, and says he: "Many thanks for your kind hospitality; and now about that straw bed?" The Virginia matron threw the vinegar-cruet at him, and says she: "My servants have already given one to your scorpions, you nasty Yankee." "Of course," says the venerable Chivalry, just missing a blow at me with a bowie-knife, "of course, your despicable Government will pay me for my property!" "Pay _you_!" says Captain Bob Shorty, hotly, "now I'll be--" "Certainly it will, my friend," broke in the conservative Kentucky chap, eagerly, "the Union troops come here as your friends; for they make war on none but traitors." As we left the domicil, my boy, brushing from our coats the slops that had just been thrown upon us from an upper window, I saw the Chivalry's children training a fowling-piece from the roof, and hoisting the flag of the Southern Confederacy on one of the chimneys. And will it be possible to regain the love of these noble people again, my boy, if we treat them constitutionally? We shall see, my boy, we shall see. Yours, for further national abasement, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER LII. DESCRIBING, AMONG OTHER THINGS, A SPECIALITY OF CONGRESS, A VENERABLE POPULAR IDOL, AND THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY CAPTAIN SAMYULE SA-MITH IN DYING. WASHINGTON, D.C., June 25th, 1862. How beautiful is Old Age, my boy, when it neither drinks nor swears. There is an oily and beneficent dignity about fat Old Age which overwhelms us with a sense of our crime in being guilty of youth. I have at last been introduced to the Venerable Gammon, who is all the time saying things; and he is a luscious example of overpowering Old Age. He is fat and gliding, my boy, with a face that looks like a full moon coming out of a sheepskin, and a dress indicating that he may be anything from a Revolutionary Forefather to the patriarch of all the Grace Church sextons. I can't find out that he ever did anything, my boy, and no one can tell why it is that he should treat everybody in office and out of it in such a fatherly and fatly condescending manner; but the people fairly idolize him, my boy, and he is all the time saying things. When I was introduced to the Venerable Gammon he was beaming benignantly on a throng of adoring statesmen in the lobby of Congress, and I soon discovered that he was saying things. "Men tell us that this war has only just commenced," says the Venerable Gammon with fat profundity, "but they are wrong. _War is like a stick, which has two ends--the end nearest you being the_ BEGINNING." Then each statesman wanted the Venerable Gammon to use _his_ pocket-handkerchief; and five-and-twenty desperate reporters tore passionately away to the telegraph office to flash far and wide the comforting remarks of the Venerable Gammon.