Some hours later, on this same car, there transpired a somewhat different scene, but one equally calculated to prove that there is indeed a North. Twenty-three wealthy secessionists were in the swift vehicle, the only other passenger being a handsome lad of about sixteen, in the uniform of a brigadier. Rendered confident by their numbers, the enemies of our beneficent form of government entered into a venomous discussion of the siege of Vicksburg, asserting that the Yazoo Expedition had not yet captured forty-two steamboats of Confederacies, and that the announcement of the capture of the Mississippi River was premature. The young soldier of the Republic went on with some candy he was eating, an apparently indifferent spectator of this symposium of treason; but the close spectator could not have failed to observe that his whole form was invisibly convulsed with a patriotic indignation. Presently, however, when one of the more hideous conspirators heartlessly remarked that we had not heard much of our army in Virginia lately, endurance ceased to be a virtue, and the young hero could no longer restrain himself. In a moment his whole aspect changed; his eyes burst into a devouring blaze, and his cheeks were in flames before aught could be done to check the conflagration. Animated by the strength of a giant, in a cause which he believed to be a noble one, he shot the traitors one by one with his revolver, and buried them in an obscure swamp near the track; he paid the driver and conductor their wages, and induced them to enlist for three years; then, after selling both the horses at auction, he broke the car into kindling-wood for the use of the poor. And this mere boy, who could make himself equal to an emergency,--what of him? I can fancy him a fond mothers pride, a venerable father's hope,--ay, even a tender sister's favorite snub. When this record of his glory reaches them, will they remember, in the midst of their proud exultation, the poor scribe whose humble pen relates to them the glories of their house? Will they drop one burning tear to the memory of him who at this moment does not know what on earth to write about next, and heartily wishes that he had been content to earn a respectable living as a reputable wood-sawyer, instead of turning writer? Will they sometimes give one idle thought to the unpretending _literateur_ who has found the glorious reward of literary merit to be an assumption by one-horse country newspapers of the right to talk about him by his family name without troubling themselves to put in the civilized courtesy of "Mr."? Will they mention in their less urgent prayer, occasionally, the modest child of the quill, who would exceed all the horrors of the Inquisition with the foes of his country, by actually forcing them to write a column for a newspaper when they felt mentally incapable of penning a single coherent paragraph? Will they?