As I wax numerous in exciting years, my boy, and observe more and more of the long-headed and strategic manner in which our wealthy but distracted country prosecutes the Restoration of the Union, the stronger grows my belief that, inasmuch as the way of the transgressor is hard, the way of the well-doer is inexpressibly "soft." Each day of the present national crisis brings fresh evidence of the exceedingly soft character of the policy by which our upright government would turn to nought the wrathful devices of its enemies, and further demonstrates the vast difference existing between everything upright and anything downright. We discomfit the well-known Southern Confederacy, at every turn, my boy,--we discomfit it at every turn; but, the trouble is, we keep turning all the time, like a Thomas cat after his tail, constantly believing that we are approaching the end, but never quite reaching it. Fearing lest I should become metaphysical if I pursued this train of thought any farther,--thereby encroaching upon the bottomless province of the Awful and Unfathomable German mind, which rejoices gloomily in the solemn investigation of all that verges upon muddled abstraction;--fearing lest I should become thus erudite, profound, and snuffily unintelligible, my boy, I repress my morbid inclination to take a funereal canter into abstruse speculation on the elephants of thought, and digress from theory to fact. This city, which is destined to become in time another Waterloo in the sense of offering everything drinkable in lieu of water, presents but very little except bar-rooms in the way of entertainment just now. Hence, my boy, we can properly appreciate the "Effigynia," as it is classically called, which a thoughtful yellow-vested chap of much breastpin, from Pequog, has just opened on Pennsylvania Avenue. According to advertisement, "this chaste and plastic exhibition consists of wax effigies of the five successive Generals of the Mackerel Brigade, with the peculiar personalities of each one, and the superiority of each over the other, unmistakably stamped on the forms and features of each!" Being a moral man, my boy, and much addicted to entertainments which differ from the prevailing drama of the day in obviating the necessity for steadily blushing, I repaired to the Effigynia the other evening and was much edified by the spectacle presented. Five mirrors standing at different angles with a wax figure of the first General of the Mackerel Brigade, were made each to reflect said figure; and I could not help feeling, my boy, that the likenesses were correct. I saw before me the counterfeit presentments of the five soldiers who had successively arisen to the highest Mackerel Command, and I found myself wondering how many more mirrors the exhibition would need before the war came to a head--containing brains.