As it was feared on Sunday last, my boy, that the venerable Mackerel Brigade was about to commit a breach of the peace by strategically assaulting the Confederacies established in the mud between the Mackerel camp and the ancient City of Paris, I mounted my architectural steed, the Gothic Pegasus, at an early hour in the morning, and perceptibly moved toward the scene of approaching tautology. The emaciated aspect of my architectural steed of the desert was so inviting to the fowls of the air, my boy, that divers disreputable crows circled suddenly around my hat, as my animal progressed with me by miscellaneously scattering his legs around beneath himself, and at each particular "caw" of the winged ministers of famine, a perceptible shudder passed through the entire framework of the deeply agitated Pegasus. Abstractedly waving my umbrella, to inspire the sable birds for loftier flights, I pondered deeply upon the lesson taught me by the evident emotions of my aged architectural servant; to ride upon whose fluted back may be likened to sitting astride the peaked roof of a small country chapel in the midst of a hard earthquake, and holding on by the steeple. If this Gothic creation, which is but a horse, thought I, is so agonized by the mere breakfast notes of a few demoralized crows in the atmosphere, how much more terrible must be the anguish of the fellow-beings known as Southern Confederacies, who must ever have a dreadful presentiment of being summarily expunged from the human race by any one of our brass-buttoned generals, who happens to board in their neighborhood for a few years. If I pity this architectural servant of mine, thought I, for his anguish at the proximity of crows in the abstract, how much more tender should be my feeling for Southern fellow-beings, who are continually endangered by the much louder crows emanating from adjacent hostile Major-General roosters. As I pondered thus, my boy, a crow of much plumage and large-sized mien, suddenly alighted upon the pommel of my saddle, as though impatient to breakfast upon some pounds of horseflesh. For an instant Pegasus trembled throughout his works; he paused suddenly in his peregrination, laid back his ears as though in deep thought, twisted his head suddenly about, and bit off the tail of the crow in the abstract! Simple as was the act, it at once relieved me, in my own mind, of all obligations to have a more tender feeling for my Southern fellow-beings than is consistent with a proper emotion of hatred against the enemies of my country. After all, we can learn much more from brutes than from men; and as Balaam's ass saw the angel before his master did, so the Angel of Victory is likely to be distinctly obvious to any poor ass in the country, before he becomes visible to the sight of our strategic great men. (I turn a pretty sharp corner in that last sentence, my boy; but that is only safe strategy when you find your argument getting ahead of you.)