"I'm off right away to enlist, And sure won't the bounty be handy-O! To kape me respectably dressed And furnish me dudheens and brandy-O! I'm thinkin', me excellent friend, Ye're eyeing that bottle of gin again; You wouldn't mind thryin' a drop"-- "You're _right_, sir," says Misther McFinnigan. British neutrality, my boy, reminds me of a chap I once knew in the Sixth Ward. Two solid men, who didn't get drunk more than once a day, were running for alderman, and they both made a dead set on this chap; but they hadn't any money, and he couldn't see it. "See here, old tops," says he, "I'll be a neutral this time; so go in porgies!" Well, my boy, the election came off, and neither of the old tops was elected. No, sir! Now, who do you suppose _was_ elected? The _Neutral Chap_, my boy! Mad as hornets with the hydrophobia, the two old tops went to see him, and says they: "Confound your picture, didn't you promise to be neutral?" The chap dipped his nose into a cocktail, and then says he, blandly: "I _was_ neutral, old Persimmonses. I only went to fifty Democrats, and got 'em to vote for me. Then to be neutral, I had to get fifty of the other feller's Black Republicans to do the same thing. Then I voted twelve times for myself, _and went in_." It was a very beautiful case, my boy, and the old tops were only heard to utter--they were only known to exclaim--they were barely able to articulate--that neutrality didn't pay. Early yesterday morning, my boy, Company B, Regiment 3, Mackerel Brigade, went down toward Centreville on a reconnoissance in force under Captain Bob Shorty. The Captain is a highly intellectual patriot, and don't get his sword twisted between his legs when he carries it in his hand. He led the company through the mud like a Christmas duck, until they came to a thicket in which something was seen to move. "Halt, you tarriers!" says Captain Bob Shorty, in a voice trembling with bravery. "Form yourselves into a square according to Hardee, while I stir up this here bush. There's something in that bush," says he, "and it's either the Southern Confederacy, or some other cow." The captain then leaned up to a tree to make him steady on his pins, my boy, and rammed his sword into the bushes like a poker into a fire--thus: Nobody hurt on our side. What followed, my boy, can be easily told. At an early hour on the evening of the same day, a solitary horseman might have been seen approaching Washington. It was Captain Bob Shorty, with his hat caved in, and a rainbow spouting under his left eye. He went straight to the head-quarters of the General of the Mackerel Brigade, and says he: "General, I've reconnoitered in force, and found the enemy both numerious and cantankerous." "Beautiful!" says the general; "but where is your company?"