"Thunder!" says the general, handing me a paper from his pocket. "They are to subsist exclusively on the enemy. Just peruse this document, which I have just fulminated." Taking the paper, I found it to be the following PROCLAMATION. Whereas, The matter of provisions is a great expense to the United States of America, besides offering inducements for unexpected raids on the part of the famishing foeman; the Mackerel Brigade is hereby directed to live entirely upon the Southern Confederacy, eating him alive wherever found, and partaking of no other food. The Brigade will not be permitted to take any clothing with it on the march, being required henceforth to dress exclusively in the habiliments of captured Confederacies. We have done with retrograde movements. No more lines of retreat will be kept open, and henceforth the Mackerel Brigade is to make nothing but great captures. By order of THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE. [Green Seal.] This able document, my boy, pleased me greatly as an evidence that the war had indeed commenced in earnest; and though at that moment, I beheld some half a dozen Confederacies ransacking the tent where the general kept his mortgages, his bank account, and other Government property, I felt that our foes were about to be summarily dealt with at last. An orderly having finally given notice to the Confederacies rummaging within our lines to get to their proper places, in order that the battle might begin, the Anatomical Cavalry, under Captain Samyule Sa-mith, made a headlong charge upon a body of foes who were destroying a bridge near the middle of the field, and succeeded in obliging them to remain there. This brilliant movement was the signal for a general engagement, and a regiment of Confederacies at once advanced within our lines and inquired the way to Washington. Having given them the desired information, and allowed a number of other similar regiments to take a position between the Mackerels and the capital, the general gave orders for the Conic Section and the Orange County Howitzers to fall cautiously back, in order that the remaining Confederacies might get between us and Richmond. You will perceive that by this movement, my boy, we cut the enemy's force completely in two, thus compelling him to attack us either in the front or in the rear, and giving him no choice of any other operation save flank movements. Our plans being thus perfected, Captain Villiam Brown, with Company 3, Regiment 5, was ordered to charge into a wood near at hand, with a view to induce some recently-arrived reserve Confederacies to take position in our centre, while still others would be likely to flank us on the right and left.