The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 1

INTRODUCING THE MACKEREL BRIGADE, DILATING ON HAVELOCKS AS FIRST MADE BY THE WOMEN OF AMERICA, ILLUSTRATING THE STRENGTH OF HABIT AND WEAKNESS OF "SHODDY," AND SHOWING HOW OUR C...

INTRODUCING THE VERITABLE "HYMN OF THE CONTRABANDS," WITH EMANCIPATION MUSIC, AND DESCRIBING THE TERRIFIC COMBAT A LA MAIN BETWEEN CAPTAIN VILLIAM BROWN, OF THE UNITED STATES OF...

Judge not by appearances, my boy; for appearances are very deceptive, as the old lady cholerically remarked when one, who was really a virgin on to forty, blushingly informed he...

To continue from where I left off, my boy: between the interesting ages of ten and eighteen I went to school at the village academy, working through the English branches and the...

As far I can trace back, my boy, we never had a literary character in our family, save a venerable aunt of mine, on my mother's side, who commenced her writing career by refusin...

The chivalrous South, my boy, has taken Fort Sumter, and only wants to be "let alone." Some things of a Southern sort I like, my boy; Southdown mutton is fit for the gods, and S...

I am living luxuriously, at present, on the top of a very respectable fence, and fare sumptuously on three granite biscuit a day, and a glass of water, weakened with brandy. A h...

INTRODUCING THE MACKEREL BRIGADE, DILATING ON HAVELOCKS AS FIRST MADE BY THE WOMEN OF AMERICA, ILLUSTRATING THE STRENGTH OF HABIT AND WEAKNESS OF "SHODDY," AND SHOWING HOW OUR C...

I have just returned, my boy, with my fellow-mercenaries and several mudsills from a carnival of gore. I am wounded--my sensibilities are wounded, and my irrepressibles reek wit...

Immediately after mailing my last to you, I secured a short furlough, and proceeded to New York, to examine into the affairs of that venerable Committee which had offered a priz...

While the Grand Army is making its preparations for an advance upon the Southern Confederacy, my boy, and the celebrated fowl of our distracted country is getting ready his spur...

It was on the eve of a day in the happy month of June, that my great grandfather's carriage, drawn by six hundred and twenty-two white horses, drew up under the tall palm trees...

Scarcely had I taken my seat in the library after my grandfather had left us, when Mr. Higgins ordered me to black his boots. This I proceeded to do with a haughty air, scarcely...

Let the reader transport himself to a small stone cottage on the Hudson, and he will behold me as I was at the age of twenty-one. I had reached that acme of woman's career when...

Seventy-five years have rolled by since last I met the reader, and I am still a thoughtless girl. But oh, how changed! The raven of despair has flapped his hideous brood over th...

When I entered the parlor, Mr. Higgins sat gazing into the fire in an attitude of deep reflection, and did not note my entrance until I had touched him. His dishevelled hair hun...

We have met the enemy at last, my boy; but I don't see that he's ours. We went after him with flying banners, and I noticed when we came back that they were flying still! Honor...

The Mackerel Brigade, of which I have the honor to be a member, was about the worst demoralized of all the brigades that covered themselves with glory and perspiration at the sk...

The weather in the neighborhood of Chain Bridge still continues to bear hard on fat men, my boy, and the man who carries a big stomach around with him will be a person in reduce...

There is every indication that something is about to occur, which, when it does transpire, my boy, will undoubtedly give rise to the rumor that a certain thing has happened. It...

Another week has fled swiftly by, my boy, on those wings which poets and other long-haired creatures suppose to be eternally flapping through the imaginary atmosphere of time; y...

This is a time, my boy, when it is the duty of every American citizen to make himself into a committee of safety, for the good of the republic, and make traitors smell the parti...

The horse, my boy, is an animal in which I have taken a deep interest ever since the day on the Union Course, when I bet ten dollars that the "Pride of the Canal" would beat "La...

At an early hour yesterday morning, while yet the dew was on the grass, and on everything else green enough to be out at that matinal hour, my boy, I saddled my gothic steed Peg...

My head swells with patriotic pride when I casually remark that the Mackerel Brigade occupy the post of honor to the left of Bull Run, which they also left on the day we celebra...

Having just made a luscious breakfast, my boy, on some biscuit discovered amid the ruins of Herculaneum, and purchased expressly for the grand army by a contracting agent for th...

Mr. Seward, my boy, who takes the Oath with much sugar in it, and is likewise Secretary of State, will probably write twenty-four letters to all the Governors this week, in cons...

'Twas early morn, my boy. The sun rushed up the eastern sky in a state of patriotic combustion, and as the dew fell upon the grassy hill-sides, the mountains lifted up their hea...

After sleeping with Congress for two days, my boy, and observing four statesmen and a small page driven to the verge of apoplexy by the exciting tale called the President's Mess...

When Britain first, at Napoleon's command, my boy, arose from out the azure main, this was her charter, her charter of the land, that Britains never, never, never shall be slave...

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, my boy, and the same to yourself. The recurrence of these gay old annuals makes me feel as ancient as the First Families of Virginia, and a...

Another year, my boy, has dawned upon a struggle in which the hopes of freedom and integrity all over the world are breathlessly involved; and if the day-star of Liberty is dest...

Scarce had the glorious sun shot up the dappled orient on Monday morn, my boy, when the Commander-in-Chief of the Mackerel Brigade received a telegraphic dispatch which reads as...

In the early part of the week I resolved to go down to Accomac, on a flying visit to Captain Villiam Brown and the Conic Section of the Mackerel Brigade. Accordingly, I went to...

Notwithstanding the hideous howlings of the Black Republicans, my boy, and the death of six Confederate pickets from old age, the Army of the Potomac will not commence the forwa...

I never really knew what the term "mudsill" meant, my boy, until I saw Captain Bob Shorty on Tuesday. I was out in a field, just this side of Fort Corcoran, trimming down the ea...

Notwithstanding your general ignorance of Natural History, my boy, you may be aware that when the eagle is wounded by the huntsman, instead of seeking some thick-set tree or dis...

There is still much lingual gymnastics, my boy, concerning the recent _fete_ sham-pate at the White House; but Colonel Wobert Wobinson, of the Western Cavalry, has extinguished...

Now swells Columbia's bosom with a pride, that sets her eyes ablaze with living fire; and, with her arms upreaching to the skies, she draws in air new crowns with stars adorned,...

I know a man, my boy, who was driven to lunacy by reliable war news. He was in the prime of life when the war broke out, and took such an interest in the struggle that it soon b...

Two days ago, my boy, a letter from the West informed me that an old friend of mine had fallen in battle at the very moment of victory. One by one, my boy, I have lost many frie...

Patriotism, my boy, is a very beautiful thing. The surgeon of a Western regiment has analyzed a very nice case of it, and says that it is peculiar to this hemisphere. He says th...

When a wise, benign, but not altogether Rhode-Island Providence saw fit to deal out a few mountains to Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia, my boy, it is barely possible that...

The most interesting natural curiosity here, next to Secretary Welles' beard, is the office of the Secretary of the Interior. Covered with spider-webs, and clothed in the dust o...

INTRODUCING THE VERITABLE "HYMN OF THE CONTRABANDS," WITH EMANCIPATION MUSIC, AND DESCRIBING THE TERRIFIC COMBAT A LA MAIN BETWEEN CAPTAIN VILLIAM BROWN, OF THE UNITED STATES OF...

The stirring times are come again, the maddest of the year, and I am beginning to believe, my boy, that what is to be will be as what has been has. Though still without my Gothi...

Having a leisure hour at my disposal, my boy, and being reminded of infatuating crinoline by the reception of certain bird-like notes in chirography strongly resembling the exqu...

There is a certain something about a sick-room, my boy, that makes me think seriously of my latter end, and recognize physicians as true heroes of the bottle-field. The subdued...

Speaking of the patriarch of the Navy Department, my boy, they say that the respected Ancient has under consideration a new and admirable plan for making the blockade efficient....

On the person of a high-minded Southern Confederacy captured the other day by the Mackerel pickets, I found a moral work which had been issued by the Arkansaw Tract Society for...

At that period of the world's history when the Past immediately preceded the Present, and the Future was yet to come, there existed in a small town of which the houses formed a...

On arriving at years of indiscretion, our hero began to display a tendency to "seven-up," Old Sledge, and other card-inal virtues, calculated to fit him for playing his cards ri...

Just before the breaking-out of the rebellion at Rome, the trade in garlic and domestic fleas took a sudden start, and the Po was crowded with vessels of all nations--especially...

All seas are liable to commotions, hence it is not strange that the Holy See encountered a storm about the time that it occurred. For some weeks, certain pure spirits had been f...

After wandering about Italy as an exile for some months, the bold patriot came to America and opened a cigar shop. The writer remembers entering his shop one day to purchase a g...

As we look abroad upon the vast nations of the earth, and remember that if they were all destroyed, not one of them would be left, the mind involuntarily conceives an idea, and...

I have just returned, my boy, from witnessing one of the most tremendous battles of modern times, and shall see star-spangled banners in every sunset for six months to come.

Suffer me, my boy, to direct your attention to the Congress of our once distracted country, which is now shedding a beautiful lustre over the whole nation, and exciting that fon...

Rejoice with me, my boy, that I have got back my gothic steed, Pegasus, from the Government chap who borrowed him for a desk. The splendid architectural animal has just enough s...

One of the Northern women of America, my boy, has sent me a note, for the express purpose of expressing her hatred of the Southern Confederacy. She says, my boy, that the Confed...

It is my belief--my solemn and affecting belief, my boy, that our once distracted country is destined to be such a great military power hereafter, that an American citizen will...

Once more, my boy, the summer sun has evoked long fields of bristling bayonets from the seed sown in spring tents, and the thunder of the shower is echoed by the roar of the sco...

Early in the week I trotted to the other side of the river on my gothic steed Pegasus, and having lent that architectural pride of the stud to a thoughtful individual, who wishe...

Not wishing to expire prematurely of inanity, my boy, I started again last Sunday for Paris, where I took up my quarters with a dignified conservative chap from the Border State...

How beautiful is Old Age, my boy, when it neither drinks nor swears. There is an oily and beneficent dignity about fat Old Age which overwhelms us with a sense of our crime in b...