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they die?"
"Yes," says the Mackerel. "That is to say," added the Mackerel, contemplatively, "they sometimes die when there's new and expensive tombstones in fashion."
"Peter Perkins!" says the married chap, with a smile of wild bliss, "I wouldn't miss the happiness I shall feel when my angel returns to her native hevings, for the sake of being twenty bachelors. No!" says the married chap, clutching his bosom, "I've lived on the thought of that air bliss ever since the morning my female pardner threw my box of long-sixes out of the window, and called in the police because I brought a waluable terrier home with me." Here the married chap uncorked his canteen and eyed it with speechless fury.
Tears came to the eyes of the unwomantic Mackerel; he extended his hand, and says he:
"Say no more, Bobby--say no more. If you ain't got the correck idea of Heaven there's no such place on the map."
I give you this touching conversation between two of nature's noblemen, my boy, that you may appreciate that beautiful dispensation of Providence which endows woman with the slighter failings of humanity, yet gives her the power to brighten the mind of inferior man with glorious visions of joy beyond the grave.
My arm has been strengthened in this war, my boy, by the inspiration of woman's courage, and aided by her almost miraculous foresight. Only yesterday, a fair girl of forty-three summers, thoughtfully sent me a box, containing two gross of assorted fish-hooks, three cook-books, one dozen of Tubbses best spool-cotton, three door-plates, a package of patent geranium-roots, two yards of Brussels carpet, Rumford's illustrated work on Perpetual Intoxication, ten bottles of furniture-polish, and some wall-paper. Accompanying these articles, so valuable to a soldier on the march, was a note, in which the kind-hearted girl said that the things were intended for our sick and wounded troops, and were the voluntary tributes of a loyal and dreamy-souled woman. I tried a dose of the furniture-polish, my boy, on a chap that had the measles, and he has felt so much like a sofa ever since, that a coroner's jury will sit on him to-morrow.
The remainder of this susceptible young creature's note, my boy, was calculated to move a heart of stone. She asked if it hurt much to be killed, and said she should think the President might sue Jeff Davis, or commit habeas corpus or some other ridiculous thing, to stop this dreadful, spirit-agonizing war. She said that her deepest heart-throbs and dream-yearnings were for the crimson-consecrated Union, and that she had lavished her most harrowing hope-sobs for its heaven-triumph. She said that she had a friend, named Smith, in the army, and wished I could find him out, and tell him that the human heart, though repining at the absence of the beloved object, may be coldly proud as a scornful statute to the stranger's eye, but pines like a soul-murdered water-lily on the lovely stream of its twilight-brooding contemplations.
Anxious to oblige her, my boy, I asked the General of the Mackerel Brigade if he knew a soldier "of the name of Smith?"
The General thought awhile, and says he:
"Not one. There are many of the name of Sa-mith," says the general, screening his eye from the sun with a bottle, "and the Smythes are numerous; but the Smiths all died as soon as the Prince of Wales came to this country."
This is an age of great aristocracy, my boy, and the name of Smith is confined to tombstones. I once knew a chap named Hobbs, who made knobs, and had a partner named Dobbs; and he never could get married until he changed his title; for what sensitive and delicately-nerved female would marry a man whose business-card read, "Try Hobbs & Dobbs' Knobs?" Finally, he called himself De Hobbs, and wedded a Miss Podger--pronounced Po-gshay. After that, he cut his partner, ordered his friends to cease calling him Jack, and in compliance with the wishes of his wife's family, got out a business-card like this:
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