My soul turns sick at these things, my boy, and they even have an effect upon a beholder's stomach. To think that our noble volunteers, our country's preservers, should be subjected to sufferings in which they have not even the poor consolation of knowing that somebody else than themselves is responsible therefor. Reflectively I turned from the scene of agony, and had rambled some fifteen minutes in an adjacent bit of woods, when the sound of voices near by made me stop short behind a tree and peer eagerly through an opening in the nearest thicket. Seated just beyond some evergreen bushes were four dilapidated Confederacies, solemnly discussing the great Emancipation Proclamation of our Honest Abe; whilst close by them, and astride of a mossy stone, was the accomplished swordsman, Captain Munchausen, frantically, and with many hiccups, endeavoring at one and the same time to catch a phantom fly and maintain his equestrian position. One of the Confederacies took a bite from a cold potato which he held in his hand, and, says he: "I reckon that it's near time for the unsubjugated South to adopt Retaliatory measures, and proclaim that all prisoners hereafter taken by the Confederacy shall be previously shot and made into bone-ornaments." Here Captain Munchausen burst into an unseemly peal of laughter as he made another wild clutch at the phantom-fly, and says he: "Wher--where's Mary's--ary's--snuff-box?" Not perceiving that this special remark was relevant to the question in view, a second Confederacy merely tightened the string which held his inexpressibles in place, and, says he: "What has been proposed by the Honorable Gentleman from the Alms House is not sufficiently severe. No mercy should be shown to the Washington demon, and I move that any Federal soldiers found disturbing a Confederacy during the progress of a battle shall be at once executed for arson." The impression created by this motion extended even to Captain Munchausen, who fell flat on his face in a frantic attempt to catch the spectral insect, and exclaimed, in tones of awful solemnity: "I don't want (hic) to be marri--ry--arried--Hic!" After a moment's pause, the third Confederacy finished buttoning his coat with a bit of corn-cob, and says he: "I move that the last Resolution be amended, to make it a capital crime for any person whatever to be guilty of Federal extraction."