This Russian tale sent us all home very thirsty, my boy; for its effect was very dry. Yours, weariedly, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER LXXIV. CONCERNING THE SERIOUS MISTAKE OF THE VENERABLE GAMMON, THE CHAPLAIN'S POETICAL DISCOVERY, THE PROMOTION OF COMMODORE HEAD, AND THE RECEPTION OF THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION BY THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. WASHINGTON, D. C., October 12th, 1862. The Southern Confederacy having delayed to sue for peace, my boy, until the safety of Washington requires that national strategy should continue metaphysical hostilities, it may be as well for you and me as a nation to prepare for a speedy commencement of War in earnest. The North, my boy, has not begun to fight yet; and as the stolid centuries roll on, and the hoary years move one by one into the sunless solitude of Eternity, it becomes daily more evident that the North's actual putting forth of all its strength is merely a question of time. The giant is only just rousing from his slumbers, and nothing but his legs and feet appear to be thoroughly awake yet. Now, is the time, my boy, for the idiotic Confederacy to save himself, by returning penitently to that beneficent Government which would have realized the millenium at half-past two o'clock on the Fourth of July, 1776, but for the unseemly villainy of the accursed Black Republicans, many of whom are shortly to be hung. That is to say, such is the opinion of the Venerable Gammon, whose benignant presence is believed to have proved the salvation of our distracted country in the Revolutionary War, though I can find nothing, except his protecting patriarchal deportment toward all the present universe, to justify the idea that he ever benefited anything. It soothes the human soul, my boy, to hear this Venerable man discoursing on the most trite subjects in tones, and with an air calculated to bless all created things as with a paternal benediction. Surrounded by a number of his idolatrous national children, and standing in front of Willard's the other evening, he pointed fatly to a bright star overhead, and says he: "That star is like our country. That star," says the Venerable Gammon, with a meaningless smile of angelic purity, "is like any other star on our flag; _though clouds may hide it in its ascending node, it is still knowed to be ascending_." Then everybody felt cheered with the peaceful conviction that Columbia was saved at last; and it's my private belief, my boy--my private belief, that the attached populace looked upon this good old man as the one who had made the star.