Here the general turned suddenly to me with tears in his eyes, and asked me to promise that I would never, never leave him. He said that I was a gen'l'm'n, and ought to give up drinking. I conducted him tenderly to the hall, where he embraced me passionately, and invited me to call and see him. As soon as he had made a few remarks to a lamp-post, requesting it to call at Willard's as it went home, and tell his wife that he was well, I took his arm, and we moved on at right angles. It is worthy of remark that at our next calling-place the ladies all beamed with joy, and told us that it was a delightful day. The general took a looking-glass for a window, and stood still before it, until I tapped him on the shoulder. "D'you zee that drunken fool standing there in the street?" says he, pointing at the mirror. "It's Lord Lyons, s'drunk as a fool." I told him that he saw only his own figure in the glass, and he said he would see me safe home if I would go right away. Chancing at the moment to catch sight of a wine-glass, my boy, he walked toward it in a circle, and hastily filled the outside of it from an empty decanter. Then balancing himself on one foot, and placing his disengaged hand on a pyramid of _blanc mange_ to support himself, he said impressively: "Ladles, and gentle-lemons, the army will move on the first of May, and--" Here the general went down under the table like a stately ship foundering at sea, and was heard to ask the wine-cooler to tell his family that he died for his country. Owing to the very hilly nature of the street, my boy, I was obliged to accompany the general home in a hack; and as we rolled along towards the hotel, he disclosed to me an agitated history of his mother's family. When last I saw him he was trying to make out why the chambermaid had put four pillows on his bed, and endeavoring to lift off the two extra ones without disturbing the others. Candidly speaking, my boy, this New-Year's-calls business is not a sensible calling, and simply amounts to a caravan of monkeys attending a menagerie of trained crinoline. Yours, philosophically, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER XXVI. GIVING THE PARTICULARS OF A FALSE ALARM, AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE OFFICER COMMANDING. WASHINGTON, D.C., January 11th, 1862. Scarce had the glorious sun shot up the dappled orient on Monday morn, my boy, when the Commander-in-Chief of the Mackerel Brigade received a telegraphic dispatch which reads as follows: "General Frost has appeared near Centreville, and is now covering the wood and road in our rear." It bore no signature, my boy; but the general believed the danger to be imminent, and ordered Captain Bob Shorty to take ten thousand men, and make a reconnoissance towards Centreville. "Bob, my cherub," says he, "if you can get behind the rebel Frost, and take the whole Confederacy prisoners, don't administer the Oath until the Eagle of America is avenged." Bob smiled like a happy oyster, and says he: