Leaving the decimated _corps_ to reorganize, I hastened down the hill again, and arrived at the bottom only to find a group of reporters and Mackerels surrounding a manly prostrate form. Company 2 had just succeeded in routing some Confederacies from a melon-patch, and Captain Samyule Sa-mith was improving the opportunity to expire once more in an affecting manner. Lifting his feeble head when he saw me, and pulling a small flag a little further out of a side-pocket in his coat, the perishing warrior smiled half way down his chin, and says he: "I still live! All hail to the old fla--" "One moment, if you please!" shouted Colonel Wobert Wobinson, breaking through the group.--"Could you make it convenient to pay me that dollar you owe me, Samyule?" Samyule arose deliberately to his feet again, my boy, wearing upon his countenance the most awful expression I ever saw upon a human face. "Well," says Samyule, furiously, "I've tried to die for my country three times to-day, and never got further than the old fla--! There is such vulgarity in them which incessantly surrounds me," says Samyule, bitterly, "that they won't even let me die in peace." Here a Mackerel chap sniffed differentially, and says he: "But you was trying to die in war, capting." There was something so inhuman in the idea of a man making a joke on such a serious occasion, as that, my boy, that the entire party was struck dumb with horror; and one of the spectators retired precipitately behind a tree, where I immediately heard him laughing wildly with joy over the thought that it was not himself who had been guilty of such a hideous enormity. It would be useless for me to spend more time in showing how the battle raged to a victorious conclusion, leaving the Mackerel Brigade in triumphant possession of the ground it occupied at the outset, and the Confederacy rooted to the spot it held from the commencement. Scarcely had the strife been finished half an hour, when the popular General of the Mackerel Brigade arrived to direct all the movements in person, and to gain some knowledge of the victories he had just won. Accompanying him was the political chap from New Haven, who at once proceeded to congratulate the troops and address them on the subject of the next election. "My brothers in arms," says he, with fond familiarity, "having done our duty as patriots, let us proceed to ballot for President of the United States in 1865. Need I say that our victorious general is the man?" Truly, my boy, we shall have little difficulty in selecting a chief magistrate next term, when there is such a General longing for the nomination. Yours, politically, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER LXXI. SHOWING HOW THE PRESIDENT AND THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE ISSUED GREAT EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS, AND HOW THE CHAPLAIN WROTE A RADICAL POEM.