We went softly to the tent together, my boy, and there beheld the beloved general of the Mackerel Brigade, with his face devoutly upturned. His face was devoutly upturned, my boy; but we could see something intervening between his countenance and the sky, and discovered, upon closer inspection, that it was a tumbler. Can it be, my boy, that this good man thought that Heaven, like any distant earthly object, could be brought nearer by looking toward it through a glass? Here is food for thought, my boy--here is food for thought. And now, Commodore Head having fished his iron-clad fleet from the tempestuous bosom of Duck Lake, and everything being in readiness--the march of the Mackerel Brigade commenced, with a silence so intense that we could distinctly hear all that anybody said. First, came a delegation of political chaps from the Sixth Ward, conversing with each other on the state of the country, and considering eight hundred and forty excellent plans for saving the Union, and getting up a straight-out ticket. Then appeared the well-known promenade band of the Mackerel Brigade, executing divers pleasant _morceaux_ on his night-key bugle, an occasional stumble over a stone giving the airs a happy variety of sudden _obligati_ improvements. Next appeared the idolized General of the Mackerel Brigade, modestly refusing to receive all the credit for the skillful movement, and assuring his staff that he really would not prefer to be President of the United States in 1865. Followed by Commodore Head, with his squadron on his shoulders, swearing as usual in his iron-plated manner, and vowing to capture Vicksburg before he was twenty years older. Then advanced Captain Villiam Brown, Eskevire, Captain Bob Shorty, and Captain Samyule Sa-mith, each indignantly rejecting the idea that this movement was a retreat, and expressing the hope that Wendell Phillips would be immediately hung for it. Then came a train of wagons containing all the provisions that could not be thrown away. Succeeded by the Mackerel Brigade with shovels at a shoulder-arms, and noses suggestive of strawberry patches in the balmy month of June. And was this _all_ the procession? you will ask; did nothing come after the Brigade itself? I am not a positive man, my boy, and care not to assert a thing unless I positively know it to be true. It was growing dark when we reached our destination, and I could not see distinctly toward the rear: yet I think I _did_ see something coming after the Mackerel Brigade. What was it? It was the Southern Confederacy, my boy--the Southern Confederacy. Your, excitedly, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER LXIV. SHOWING HOW THE COSMOPOLITANS MET AGAIN, TO BE INTRODUCED TO THE "NEUTRAL BRITISH GENTLEMAN," AND HEAR MR. BONBON'S FRENCH STORY.