“The representative of the Church Militant was properly backed up by the Flying Artillery.  Their banner announced that they were ‘for the reduction of Sebastopol,’ and it is safe to say that they will certainly take that fortress, if they get a chance.  If the Russians hold out against those four ghostly steeds, tandem, with their bandy-legged and kettle-stomached riders,—­that gun, so strikingly like a joint of old stove-pipe in its exterior, but which upon occasion could vomit forth your real smoke and sound and smell of unmistakable brimstone,—­and those slashed and blood-stained artillerymen,—­they will do more than anybody did on Wednesday.

“The T.L.N.  Horn-et Band, with Sackbut, Psaltery, Dulcimer, and Shawm, Tanglang, Locofodeon, and Hugag, marched next.  They reserved their efforts for special occasions, when they woke the echoes with strains of altogether unearthly music, composed for them expressly by Saufylur, the eminent self-taught New Zealand composer.

“Barnum’s Baby-Show, on four wheels, in charge of the great showman himself, aided by that experienced nurse, Mrs. Gamp, in somewhat dilapidated attire, followed.  The babies, from a span long to an indefinite length, of all shapes and sizes, black, white, and snuff-colored, twins, triplets, quartettes, and quincunxes, in calico and sackcloth, and in a state of nature, filled the vehicle, and were hung about it by the leg or neck or middle.  A half-starved quadruped of osseous and slightly equine appearance drew the concern, and the shrieking axles drowned the cries of the innocents.

“Mr. Joseph Hiss and Mrs. Patterson of Massachusetts were not absent.  Joseph’s rubicund complexion, brassy and distinctly Know-Nothing look, and nasal organ well developed by his experience on the olfactory committee, were just what might have been expected.  The ‘make up’ of Mrs. P., a bright brunette, was capital, and she looked the woman, if not the lady, to perfection.  The two appeared in a handsome livery buggy, paid for, we suppose, by the State of Massachusetts.

“A wagon-load of two or three tattered and desperate looking individuals, labelled ‘Recruits for the Crimea,’ with a generous supply of old iron and brick-bats as material of war, was dragged along by the frame and most of the skin of what was once a horse.

“Towards the rear, but by no means least in consequence or in the amount of attention attracted, was the army hospital, drawn by two staid and well-fed oxen.  In front appeared the snowy locks and ‘fair round belly, with good cotton lined’ of the worthy Dr. Esculapius Liverwort Tarand Cantchuget-urlegawa Opodeldoc, while by his side his assistant sawbones brayed in a huge iron mortar, with a weighty pestle, much noise, and indefatigable zeal, the drugs and dye-stuffs.  Thigh-bones, shoulder-blades, vertebrae, and even skulls, hanging round the establishment, testified to the numerous and successful amputations performed by the skilful surgeon.