"There!" says the serious New Haven chap, as he finished reading, stirring something softly with a spoon, "what do you suppose Poe would think, if he were alive now and could read that?" "I think," says I, striving to appear calm, "that he would be 'Raven' mad about it." "Oh--ah--yes," says the serious chap, vaguely, "what will _you_ take?" Doubtless I shall become hardened to the horrors of war in time, my boy; but at present these things unhinge me. Yours, unforgivingly, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER V. CONCERNING THE GREAT CROWD AT THE CAPITAL, OWING TO THE VAST INFLUX OF TROOPS, AND TOUCHING UPON FIRE-ZOUAVE PECULIARITIES AND OTHER MATTERS. WASHINGTON, D.C., May 24th, 1861. I am living luxuriously, at present, on the top of a very respectable fence, and fare sumptuously on three granite biscuit a day, and a glass of water, weakened with brandy. A high private in the Twenty-second Regiment has promised to let me have one of his spare pocket-handkerchiefs for a sheet on the first rainy night, and I never go to bed on my comfortable window-brush without thinking how many poor creatures there are in this world who have to sleep on hair mattresses and feather-beds all their lives. Before the great rush of the Fire Zouaves and the rest of the menagerie commenced, I boarded exclusively on a front stoop on Pennsylvania Avenue, and used to slumber, regardless of expense, in a well-conducted ash-box; but the military monopolize all such accommodation now, and I give way for the sake of my country. I tell you, my boy, we're having high old times here just now, and if they get any higher, I shan't be able to afford to stay. The city is in "danger" every other hour, and as a veteran in the Fire Zouaves remarked, there seems to be enough danger laying around loose on Arlington Heights to make a very good blood-and-thunder fiction in numerous pages. If the vigilant and well-educated sentinels happen to see an old nigger on the other side of the Potomac, they sing out, "Here they come!" and the whole blessed army is snapping caps in less than a minute. Then all the cheap reporters telegraph to their papers in New York and Philadelphia, that "Jeff. Davis is within two minutes' walk of the Capital, with a few millions of men," and all the free states send six more regiments a piece to crowd us a little more. I sha'n't stand much more crowding, for my fence is full now, and there were six applications yesterday to rent an improved knot-hole. My landlord says that, if more than three chaps set up housekeeping on one post, he'll be obliged to raise the rent.