Moral.—­Keep the Sun out of your eyes.

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[Illustration:  A CHEERFUL PROSPECT.

First Old Loafer.  “THE PAPERS SAYS THERE’S A CHANCE OF THE BOURBON DIE NASTY REIGNING IN FRANCE AGAIN.”

Second ditto.  “BULLY!  IF THERE’S ANYTHING I LIVE FOR ITS A HIGH OLD RAIN OF BOURBON.  LET IT POUR!”]

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SARSFIELD YOUNG ON FORT SUMTER.

The country was indignant that Fort Sumter was not reinforced.  Major Anderson’s supplies were nearly exhausted, and he wanted twenty thousand men, with equipments and rations.  If the Government couldn’t afford the rations—­very well:  it ought at least to given him the men.

I am speaking of the late rebellion, which GREELEY, HEADLEY, and others have written up.  Although a publishing company at Hartford, Conn., own most of the facts of the war, which they peddle out only by subscription, they can give the public but little of the secret history of the Fort Sumter affair.  That remains to be written, while WELLER and I remain to write it.  The Ex-Secretary has gracefully left it to me to describe the midnight session of the Cabinet at which I chanced to be present.

I was boarding at the White House at the time, and as President LINCOLN assured me it would be rather interesting, I was persuaded to attend.  “The fact is, the crisis reminds me,” said he, of a little story of a horse-trot in Arkansas—­”

“Sir,” interrupted I, “it reminds me of a dozen stories, one of AEsop’s fables, and two hundred lives of CHAUCER.”

He was afraid to continue.

As the clock struck twelve, he called the meeting to order and remarked:  “Gentlemen, ANDERSON is in Sumter.  The question now is,—­what will he do with it?”

South Carolina was out.  BUCHANAN had done nothing.  Everywhere was distrust. (That very day they had refused, on Pennsylvania avenue, to trust me for a spring overcoat.) STANTON was getting his dark lantern ready for nightly interviews with SUMNER and WENDELL PHILLIPS in a vacant lot upon the outskirts of the Capitol.  Universal gloom prevailed.

SEWARD opened the discussion.  He said it was contemplated to throw four thousand men into Fort Sumter.  We couldn’t do it.  If we did, it would only be one of the first throes of a civil conflict, a war long and bloody, which he would venture to predict might be protracted even to the extent of ninety days.  Were we prepared for that?  He would like to hear from that pure patriot, the Secretary of War, on this point.

Amid murmurs of applause, Gen. CAMERON rose to say that he was wholly unprepared to make a speech; but he owned a lot of condemned muskets, which he stood ready to dispose of to the Government at four times their original cost.  He should advise that the Fort be covered with several thicknesses of Pennsylvania railroad iron.  It would protect our gallant troops, and he was now, as he had always been, in favor of protection.  Besides, he knew parties who could get up a ring in the way of army blankets.