“SIR:—­Our latest dates from Oronoco are to the 13th ultimo.  The ’Constitution of ‘23’ was then in full power.  If, however, the policy of our government be to recognize the gentlemen whose principals shall be in office on the 2d proximo, it is a very different affair.

    “You may not be acquainted with the formulas for ascertaining the
    duration of any given modern revolution.  I now use the following,
    which I find almost exactly correct.

“Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in days.  This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of the theorists.  The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the 25th of October last If you will give the above formula into the hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show that that government will go out of power on the 1st of February, at 25 minutes after 1, P.M.  Your choice, on the 2d, must be therefore between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no difficulty.  Bobadil (Vibeira’s principal) was on the 13th ultimo confined under sentence of death, at such a distance from the capital that he cannot possibly escape and get into power before the 2d of February.  The ‘Friends of the People,’ in Oronoco, have always moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less than nineteen days’ canvassing; that was in 1839.  Generally they are even longer.  Of course, Estremadura will be your man.

    “Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

    “GEORGE HACKMATACK”

The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice.  My information proved nearly correct, the only error being one of seven minutes in the downfall of the 1823 Constitution.  This arose from my making no allowance for difference of longitude between Piaut, where their government was established, and Opee, where it was crushed.  The difference of time between those places is six minutes and fifty-three seconds, as the reader may see on a globe.

Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold his scrip.]

[Footnote G:  Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that half past one was late in 1836.  At that time the “Great Western Mail” was due in Boston at 6 P.M., and there was no later news except “local,” or an occasional horse express.]

[Footnote H:  The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when the German was yet unknown.]

[Footnote I:  Anno Christi, 60.]

[Footnote J:  Tacit.  Annal., xiv. 9]

[Footnote K:  Anno Christi, 60.  See Neander, P. & T., B. iii. ch. x]

[Footnote L:  This correspondence, as preserved in the collections of fragments, has too much the aspect of a school-boy exercise to claim much credit, though high authorities support it as genuine.  But the probability that there was such a correspondence, though now lost, is very strong.]