Mrs. Jobbins straightened herself up, with a glare, and says she: "Perhaps, mem, you can teach _me_ eddication, and my own daughter a teacher these two years in the public schools! The ideor! I repeat it--to reconstruct her--put her together again."
"You're a artful, ignorant old copperhead!" howled the maternal, dropping her daughter's head upon the floor.
"And you're a spiteful, stuck-up, toothless old--ab'litionist!!" yelled the dowager, stamping until her snuff-box hopped out of her pocket.
Drawn to the room by the noise, a hard old nut, a retired foreman of old "Sixty," stuck his head in at the door, and says he: "What are you old fools scrimmaging about? You're keeping the swarry back."
Both the old ladies made at him at once to know which, in his opinion, was the right word,--'Reconstruct,' or 'Restore?'
The old nut took a thoughtful bite of tobacco, and says he: "Let the girl herself tell you when she _revives_."
Revive was the word, my boy; and while the old women were quarrelling over the two terms aforesaid, poor nature got tired of waiting, and realized the right one in action for herself. The girl revived without being either restored, or reconstructed.
And thus, my boy, I sometimes think, that, whilst noisy old political grannies are quarrelling as to whether the Union shall be Restored, or Reconstructed, the fainting young Union will suddenly revive of itself. At any rate, it bids fair to have plenty of time to do so.
In a recent letter I noted the return of the main body of the invincible and time-honored Mackerel Brigade to what may be termed the place of its military birth; but I did not, nor can I, describe justly the many touching incidents of the retrogression. Once more, my boy, does this standard national martial organization find itself on the right side of Awlkuyet River, and many a sensitive Mackerel, as he gazes through his tear-dimmed spectacles upon the surrounding scenery of his youth, fancies himself a boy again, and newly experiences in all his muscles that tingling sensation which, in the full-blooded lad, equally follows a public compliment and a private flogging. As the gory and venerable Brigade wound slowly back into the well-known fields rendered historically famous for making Washington safe, one very ancient Mackerel grounded his musket by the roadside, took off his spectacles, looked with deep emotion upon the scenes of his early years, and says he to another Mackerel:--