The United States of America, my boy, and the well-known Southern Confederacy, are like two irascible terriers practising defiant strategy between two bones, the one being the festive negro-question, and the other the Union. Now it seems to me, my boy--it seems to me, that if the gay animal with U. S. on his collar would only dispose of the bone nearest him without further vocalism, there would be a better chance for him to secure the other bone in the combat sure to come. Dogs, my boy, and men, are very much alike, in their hostile meetings, neither seeming to know just exactly which is truly their _magnum bonum_. Ascending the roof of my architectural steed, Pegasus, on Tuesday, I induced the gothic animal to adopt a pace sometimes affected by the fleet tortoise, and went down to Accomac in pursuit of knowledge respecting recruiting. Just before reaching that Arcadian locality, my boy, I met Colonel Wobert Wobinson, of the Western Cavalry, who had been down there to induce volunteering and infuse fresh confidence into the masses. He offered a bounty of two hundred dollars; three dollars to be paid immediately, and the rest as soon as the war commences in earnest; and promised to each man a horse physically incapacitated from running away from anything. "Well, my bold dragoon," says I, cordially, noticing that Pegasus had already fallen into a peaceful doze, "how go enlistments?" The colonel waved away an abstracted crow that was hovering in deep reverie over my charger's brow, and says he: "I have enlisted all the people of Accomac." "I want to know," says I, Bostonianly. "Yes," says he, "I called a meeting, and succeeded in enlisting all--their sympathies." As I gazed upon the equestrian warrior, my boy, methought I saw the youngest offspring of a wink trembling in a corner of his right eye, and I felt that the world renowned Snyder was at that moment laboring under a heavy incubus. Such is life. The state of health in Accomac indicates that the demon of disease is abroad in the land, looking chiefly for his victims among those between the tender ages of eighteen and forty-five. Instead of having a sling in his hand, like the young warrior David, each young man I met had his hand in a sling, whilst the dexter leg of more than one able-bodied patriot suggested the juvenile prayer of "Now I lame me, down to slip." And there were the women of America fairly crying in terror of the draft, instead of bearing themselves like the Spartan ribs of old. Alas! my boy, why cannot our people realize, that a nation, like a cooking-stove, cannot keep up a steady fire without a good draft. We need men for the crisis, and we only find cry sisses for the men. I could not stay here, so I hastened on to Paris, where a great strategic movement was about to supply all the world with fresh recollections of the late Napoleon. I say _late_ Napoleon, my boy, because our Napoleon is apt to be behind time.