"It is also ordered that no female visitor to the celebrated Southern Confederacy shall carry more than eight large trunks and a bonnet-box for each month in the year; and that no female shall pass the line, whose dimensions in full dress exceed the ordinary space between two pickets, as the latter will, on no account be permitted to edge away from their stations at this trying crisis in the history of our distracted country. "O'PAKE, "Sergeant Mackerel Brigade." This inhuman order had scarcely been issued when there came to the Mackerel lines in front of Paris a virtuous young female, aged 23 with the figures reversed, who was disgusted with the great vulgarity of the North, and wished to visit the marriageable Southern Confederacy, having heard that the Confederacy was carefully Husbanding its resources. Being a poor girl, with "nothing to wear," she only had seven Saratoga trunks, ten bandboxes, fourteen small carpet-bags, and a lap-dog; yet the ill-bred O'Pake was suspicious enough to examine one of her trunks. He ruthlessly opened it in her presence, my boy, and quickly met with the horrible fate which was at once immortalized by the Mackerel Chaplain in the following awful presentment: "THE AVENGING SKELETON." "When tyrant purpose made the martial fool With brief authority profoundly drunk, Unto his minions issued forth a rule, To search each Southward-going woman's trunk. "There was a Sergeant of the Mack'rel ranks Made one attempt to carry out the law; But ah!--to Providence a thousand thanks!-- He met a doom to fill the soul with awe. "Scarce had his impious hands the task begun;-- Scarce had he ope'd the vast and mammoth thing,-- When, from the trunk's interior Phlegethon, Came forth a horrid phantom, with a spring! "It was a dreadful monster, without flesh, Made up of ever-less'ning, perfect hoops; More terrible to vision than secesh, With all his ragged, whiskey-drinking troops. "The wretched Sergeant started back with fear, And would have 'scaped the penalty incurred; But, ah! the spectre caught him by an ear, And held him trembling like a prisoned bird. "Wrought up to frenzy by mishap so dire, He struck the phantom in his thoughtless rage; But 'twas like fanning to put out a fire, And straight his hand was tangled in a cage! "And then his other tyrant hand he tried To ease the springs that pressed him ev'rywhere; His futile blow the Skeleton defied,-- His other hand was taken in a snare! "Then round his form the dread avenger coiled, Like snakes' backbones in unelastic curl; By prison-bars his wished retreat is foiled, And in a cage behold the trembling churl.