At an early hour yesterday morning, while yet the dew was on the grass, and on everything else green enough to be out at that matinal hour, my boy, I saddled my gothic steed Pegasus, and took a trot for the benefit of my health. Having eaten a whole straw bed and a piece of an Irishman's shoulder during the night, my architectural beast was in great spirits, my boy, and as he snuffed the fresh air and unfurled the remnants of his warlike tail to the breeze of heaven, I was reminded of that celebrated Arabian steed which had such a contempt for the speed of all other horses that he never would run with them--in fact, my boy, he never would run at all. Having struck a match on that rib of Pegasus which was most convenient to my hand, I lit a cigar, and dropped the match, still burning, into the right ear of my fiery charger. Something of this kind is always necessary to make the sagacious animal start; but when once I get his mettle up he never stops, unless he happens to hear some crows cawing in the air just above his venerable head. I am frequently glad that Pegasus has lost his eyesight, my boy; for could he see the expression on the faces of some of these same crows, when they get near enough to squint along his backbone, it would wound his sensibilities fearfully. On this occasion he carried me, at a speed of 2.40 hours a mile, to a point just this side of Alexandria, where the sound of heavy cannonading and cursing made me pause. At first, my boy, I remembered an engagement I had in Washington, and was about to hasten back; but while I was pressing the lighted end of my cigar to the side of Pegasus, to make him turn, Colonel Wobert Wobinson, of the Western Cavalry, came walking toward me from a piece of woods on my right, and informed me that ten of his men had just been attacked by fourteen thousand rebels, with twenty columbiads. "The odds," says he, "is rather heavy; but our cause is the noblest the world ever knew, and if my brave boys do not vanquish the unnatural foe, an indignant and decimated people will at once call upon the Cabinet to resign." I told him that I thought I had read something like that in the _Tribune_; but he didn't seem to hear me. By this time the cannonading had commenced to subside, and as I trotted alongside of Colonel Wobinson toward the field of battle, I asked him what he had done with his horse. He replied, that while on his way to the field, his sagacious beast had observed a hay-stack, and was so entranced with the vision that he refused to go a step further; so he had to leave him there.