"Our pickets," says the messenger, impressively "have been driven in; they have been driven into Richmond." "Ah!" says Villiam, pleasantly, "then send out some more pickets." I strolled away from the pair, my boy, reflecting upon the possibility of enough Mackerel pickets reaching Richmond in this way to make the Union sentiment there stronger than ever, and was looking listlessly to my footing, when I chanced to espy a paper on the ground. Picking it up, I found it to be a note from the wife of the Southern Confederacy to her cousin, dropped, probably by one of the Confederacies of the wood-pile. It bore the date of April the First, and read as follows: "DEAR JULEYER:--I have just space of time to write you these few lines, hoping that these few lines will find you the same, and in the enjoyment of the same blessing. O my unhappy country! how art thou suffering at this present writing! I have not had a single new bonnet for two weeks, my beloved Juleyer, and my Solferino gloves are already discolored by the perspiration I have shed when thinking of my poor, dear South. My husband, the distinguished Southern Confederacy, is so reduced by trials, that he is a mere skeleton skirt. Oh, my Juleyer, how long is this to continue? Ere another century shall have passed away, the Yankees will have approached nearer Charleston and Savannah, and the blockade become almost effective. Since the Mackerel Brigade has changed its base of operations, even Richmond seems doomed to fall in less than fifty years. Everything looks dark. Tell me the price of dotted muslin, for undersleeves, when you write again, and believe me, Your respected cousin, "MRS. S. C." * * * * * There's only one thing about this letter bothers me, and that's the date, my boy--the date. When very near this city, on my return home, I met a chap, weighing about two hundred and twenty-five pounds, who was on his way to a lawyer's to get his exemption from the draft duly filed. "See here, my patriotic invalid," says I, skeptically, "how do you come to be exempt?" "I am exempt," says he, in a proudly melancholy manner, "because I am suffering from a broken heart." "Hem," says I. "It's true," says he, sniffling dismally. "I asked the female of my heart to have me. She said I hadn't enough postage-stamps to suit her ideas of personal revenue, and she didn't care to do my washing. That was enough: my heart is broken, and I am not an able-bodied man." Drafting, my boy, is of a nature to develop the seeds of disease in the hitherto healthy human system--seeds which, if suffered to fructify, will be likely to ultimate in what gentlemen of burglarious accomplishments would chastely and botanically denominate a very large-sized "plant."