"Learning, sir, that you are qualified to cull from your extensive poetical readings some unique couplet appropriate for my approaching coat-of-arms, I desire you to furnish me with the same, and present your bill to our Excellent Democratic Organization, of which I am Chief Indian near--In short, a Sachem local. My patriotism," says he, shading a slight cough with a black cotton-glove,--"My patriotism is doubted by none but those imbecile despots who defeated our Excellent Democratic Organization in the last Presidential election, and are now waging a bloody and unnatural war for the sake of the Demon of Africa. But my patriotism hurls back the epithet of 'traitor,' and is clearly established by the fact that I had an ancestor in the Revolution. It is my wish," says this plausibly-spoken chap, nodding to a Faro-banker as he happened to pass at that moment,--"it is my wish that the couplet should express, neatly and figuratively as it were, the exact degree of my present patriotism, and its derivation from my Revolutionary ancestor. Let it represent me clothed in patriotism, as it were." I thought upon his words for a while, my boy, and then says I: "For such unspeakable patriotism as yours, good Fuel, there can be no finer couplet than this: "'_A painted vest Prince Vortiger had on,_ _That from a naked Pict his grandsire won._'" The Honorable Fuel turned very crimson in the face with intense gratification, and says he: "Ha! ha!--ahem! Yes, that's not bad. Ha! ha! very good--you infernal Black Republican you!" He left me, as a cloud might leave the sun with which it had vainly attempted to cut up shines, and I felt for a moment, like one lost in the Wood. With the best intentions in the world, I had only succeeded in adding Fuel to the flames of treason. It pleases me to say that Herr Suvchork, one of those eminent foreign strategists of war who have visited our distracted country for the truly benignant purpose of teaching us how we may win battles only recently lost, has honored me with a great metaphysical criticism upon the recent reconnoissance and triangular proceeding of the New General of the Mackerel Brigade against the well-known Southern Confederacies on the other side of Duck Lake. We may all learn a valuable lesson, my boy, from this able _critique_, which reads thus: "SOMEDINGS ABOUT ODDERDINGS.