"I think, my boy, I say I _think_, that this kindly advice of Colonel Wobert Wobinson's must have been misunderstood in some way; for an instant departure of several piously-inclined recruits took place precipitately, and the poor chap chuckled like a fiend. It is the great misfortune of our mother tongue, my boy, that words of widely-different meanings have precisely the same sound, and in using one you seem to be abusing another. Arriving near the celebrated Molasses Junction, where a number of Mackerels were placing a number of new cars and locomotives on the track--the object being to delude the Southern Confederacy into taking a ride in them, when, it was believed, the aforesaid Confederacy would speedily be destroyed by one of those "frightful accidents" without which a day on any American railroad would be a perfect anomaly--arriving there, I say, I took an immediate survey of the appointed field of strife. To the inexperienced civilian eye, my boy, everything appeared to be in a state of chaotic confusion, which nothing but the military genius of our generals could make much worse. On all sides, my boy, I beheld the Mackerel chaps marching and countermarching; falling back, retiring, retreating, and making retrograde movements. Some were looking for their regiments; some were insanely looking for their officers, as though they did not know that the latter have resided permanently in Washington ever since the war commenced; some were making calls on others, and here and there might be seen squads of Confederates picking up any little thing they might happen to find. Finding the general of the Mackerel Brigade lunching upon a bottle and tumbler near me, I saluted him, and says I: "Tell me, my veteran, how it is that you permit the Southern Confederacy to meander thus within your lines?" The general looked toleratingly at me, and says he; "I have a plan to entrap the Confederacy, and end this doomed rebellion at one stroke. Do you mark that long train of army wagons down there near my quarters?" "Yes," says I, nervously. "Well, then, my nice little boy," says the general, cautiously, "I'll tell you what the plan is. These wagons contain the rations of our troops. It is my purpose to induce the celebrated Confederacy to capture these wagons and attempt to eat those rations. If the Confederacy will only do that," says the general, fiercely, "it will be taken sick on the spot, and we shall capture it alive." I could not but feel shocked at this inhuman artifice, my boy. The Southerners have indeed acted in away to forfeit all ordinary mercy, but still, we should abstain from any retaliatory act savoring of demoniac malignity. Our foes are at least human beings. Suppressing my horror, however, I assumed a practical aspect, and says I: "But how are the Mackerel warriors to subsist, my Napoleon, if you allow the rations to go?"