All the best-looking uniforms in the army were invited to Mrs. Lincoln's ball at the White House on Wednesday, and of course I was favored, together with the general of the Mackerel Brigade, and Captain Villiam Brown, of Accomac. My ticket, my boy, was as aristocractic as a rooster's tail at sunrise: [Illustration: (CUTLETS.) _E pluri bust Union._ (OYSTERS.) ORPHEUS C. KERR, Pleasure of your Company at the White House, (R.S.V.P.) WEDNESDAY, Feb. 5th, 1862. 8 o'clock, P.M. (HALF MOURNING FOR PRINCE ALBERT.) NO SMOKING ALOUD.)] At an early hour on the evening of the _fête_, the general of the Mackerel Brigade came to my room in a perfect perspiration of brass buttons and white kids, and I asked him what "no smoking aloud" meant. "Why," says he, putting his wig straight and licking a stray drop of brandy from one of his gloves, "it means that if you try to 'smoke' any of the generals at the ball as to the plan of the campaign, you mustn't do it 'aloud.' Thunder!" says the general, in a fine glow of enthusiasm, "the only plan of the campaign that I know anything about, is the rata-plan." Satisfied with the general's explanation, I proceeded with my toilet, and presently beamed upon him in such a resplendent conglomeration of ruffles, brass buttons, epaulettes and Hungarian pomade, that he said I reminded him of a comet just come out of a feather-bed, with its tail done up in papers. "My Magnus Apollo," says he, "the way you bear that white cravat shows you to be of rich but genteel parentage. Any man," says he, "who can wear a white cravat without looking like a coachman, may pass for a gentleman-born. Two-thirds of the clergymen who wear it look like footmen in their grave-clothes." We then took a hack to the White House, my boy, and on arriving there were delighted to find that the rooms were already filling with statesmen, miss-statesmen, mrs-statesmen, and officers, who had so much lace and epaulettes about them that they looked like walking brass-founderies with the front-door open. The first object that attracted my special attention, however, was a thing that I took for a large and ornamental pair of tongs leaning against a mantel, figured in blue enamel, with a life-like imitation of a window-brush on top. I directed the general's attention to it, and asked him if that was one of the unique gifts presented to the Government by the late Japanese embassy? "Thunder!" says the general, "that's no tongs. It's the young man which is Captain Villiam Brown, of Accomac. Now that I look at him," says the general, thoughtfully, "he reminds me of an old-fashioned straddle-bug." Stepping from one lady's dress to another, until I reached the side of the Commander of the Accomac, I slapped him on the back, and says I: "How are you, my blue-bird; and what do you think of this brilliant assemblage?"