"Hem!" says the Honest Abe, shaking a musquito from his nightcap, "this strategy reminds me of a little story. There was a man, out in Iowa, sat down to play a game of checkers with another man, inducing his friends around him to lend him the change necessary for stakes. He played and he played, and he lost the first game. Then he played much more cautiously, and lost the next game. His friends commenced to grumble; but, says he: 'Don't you worry yourselves, boys, and I'll show you a cute move pretty soon.' So he played, and he played, and he lost the third game. 'Don't be impatient, boys,' says he; 'you'll see that great move pretty soon, I tell you.' Then he played with great care, taking a long time to consider every move, and, by way of change, lost the fourth game. Close attention to what he was about, and much minute calculation, also enabled him to lose the fifth game. By this time his friends had lent him all their change, and began to think it was time for that great move of his to come off. 'Have you any more change?' says he. 'Why, no,' says they. 'Then,' says he, with great spirit, 'the time for that move I was telling you about has come at last.' As he commenced to rise from his chair, instead of continuing to play, his cleaned-out friends bethought themselves to ask him what that famous move was? 'Why,' says he, pleasantly, 'it's to move off for a little more change.'" At the conclusion of this quaint tale, my boy, the Border State chap fled groaning to his quarters at Willard's, stuck a five-dollar Treasury Note under the pillow of the other Border State chap, and immediately took the evening train for the West. Such is the story they tell, my boy; but I'm inclined to accept it merely as a work of fiction, with a truthful moral. Certain it is, that as strategy increases, small change grows scarcer, and it is the general opinion that no small change is needed in military matters. In company with a patriotic democratic chap, who had come up from New York, for the express purpose of seeing that the negroes of the Southern Confederacy were not permitted to inform our forces of the movements of the enemy in contravention of the Constitution, I made a reconnoissance in force, on Monday, to the festive Shenandoah Valley. On our way thither, the democratic chap was greatly bitten by musquitos, for which he justly blamed the black republicans, who are trying to break up this Government, and on our arrival near Winchester, we stumbled upon a phlegmatic fellow-man in a swallow-tailed coat and green spectacles, who was seated on a stone by the roadside, reading the "Impending Crisis." The democratic chap passed on, swearing, to the nearest camp; but I paused before this interesting student. "Well, old swallow-tails," says I, affably, "what are you doing in this section?"