Those Fire Zouaves are fellows of awful suction, I tell you. Just for greens, I asked one of them, yesterday, what he came here for? "Hah!" says he, shutting one eye, "we came here to strike for your altars and your fires--especially your _fires_." General Scott says that if he wanted to make these chaps break through the army of a foe, he'd have a fire-bell rung for some district on the other side of the rebels. He says that half a million of the traitors couldn't keep the Fire Zouaves out of that district five minutes. I believe him, my boy! The weather here is highly favorable to the free development of perspiration and mint-juleps, and I have enjoyed the melancholy satisfaction of losing ten pounds of flesh in three days. One of the lieutenants of the Eighth has a gutter about half an inch deep worn down the bridge of his nose by the stream of perspiration since Wednesday; and a chap from Vermont melted so awfully the other day, that they had to put him in a refrigerator to keep enough of him to send home to his rich but pious family. In fact, this weather makes the Northern boys fall away awfully; one of the Fire Zouaves fell away tremendously yesterday; he fell away from Washington to Annapolis, and then somebody had to put him in a guard-house to keep him from perspiring all the way back to New York. The chap that boards on the next front stoop to me now, was so fat when he came here that his captain refused to use him as a sentinel, because he could not see far enough over his stomach to detect any one approaching him. Well, my boy, that chap has fallen away to such an extent that it took me half an hour last night to find out what part of his uniform he lived in. He blew down three or four times while we were walking up Pennsylvania avenue; and while I was helping him up the last time, a passer-by asked me "What I would take for that ere flag-staff?" By-the-by, you ought to have heard Honest Old Abe's speech, on Wednesday, when we raised the Star-spangled particular on the Post-office. Says he: "On this present occasion, I feel that it will not be out of place to make a few remarks which were not applicable at a former period. Yesterday, the flag hung on the staff throughout the Union, and in consequence of the scarcity of a breeze, there was not much wind blowing at the time. On the present happy occasion, however, the presence of numerous zephyrs causes the atmosphere to agitate for our glorious Union, and this flag, which now unfolds itself to the sight, is observed, upon closer inspection, to present a star-spangled appearance."