Right across the little field in front of us, seated on the last remaining post of a ruined fence, was a ragged Confederacy, in a perfect whirlpool of tatters, who had rested his musket upon the ground, and was alternately gnawing an army biscuit and casting longing looks toward his happier enemy. He was a dreadfully thin, hollow-eyed chap, my boy, and shivered in the cold. The Mackerel stared at him without motion for some minutes, and then commenced to handle his turkey again. Then he stared again, dropped his turkey, picked it up, and finally rose to his feet impatiently--looked toward his nearest comrade--and then seated himself with his back toward the Confederacy. Still the latter gnawed and looked longingly. The Mackerel said, "damme!" quite distinctly and stoutly, and vigorously grasped at a "drumstick" again. He gave it a twist, paused, wavered, and _looked over his shoulder_. In another instant, my boy, that Mackerel sprang to his feet, faced about, shouted: "I'll do it, by G--d! if I swing for it"--dashed across the field like a stark madman, and, before the astonished Confederacy could budge an inch, had hurled the turkey into his arms and was tearing back to his own post. There is a chivalry, my boy, that makes a man a hero with the sword of a patriot, or bears him triumphantly through perils and obstacles to the arms of the bride he has won. There is a chivalry that inspires a man to spurn with contempt the fortune not fraught with all honor, and gives him the graces of a gentleman through all the glooms and burdens of honest poverty. But in that grander Chivalry native to the soul, which raises the tenderness of our best humanity far above the highest point all enmity can reach, and lets it fall, like God's own dew, upon the other side, none, none more fairly ever won a knighthood, than that poor Mackerel picket-guard on last Thanksgiving Day. Yours, gently, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER CII. SHOWING THE INGENIOUS FINANCIAL ENERGY OF A GREATLY-REDUCED POLITICIAN; AND DESCRIBING A COMBAT, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENTMENT OF THE WELL-KNOWN SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY UNDER ALL REVERSES. WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 17th, 1864.