CHAPTER V.

IN NEW YORK.

[N. Y. Herald, Oct., 1868.

PRIV

RIVATE Miles O'Reilly, Forty-seventh regiment New York Volunteers, having been pardoned by the President for his breach of decorum in publishing songs relative to the joint naval and military operations against Charleston, came to this city in the Arago last week, having been given a thirty days'

furlough by General Gillmore, at the end of which time he will proceed to Washington, and report to the President for special duty. Private O'Reilly was received by a large party of distinguished friends off Sandy Hook, on board the steam yacht of our excellent Port Surveyor, Mr. Rufus F. Andrews, who seems always ready to give both his vessel and his time to such festivities. Excellent speeches were made by General Daniel E. Sickles, Mr. James T. Brady, John Van Buren, Wm. E. Robinson, Commodore Joseph Hoxie, Judge Charles P. Daly, Daniel Devlin, and others; while Dr. Carmichael, Mr. John Savage, Mr. Stephen C. Massett, Mr. Barney Williams, and several celebrated songsters, amateur and professional, favored the company with patriotic and expressive melodies as the good vessel steamed up the Hudson on a brief pleasure trip.

Private O'Reilly is now staying at the residence of his cousin, Mr. James O'Reilly, quite a prominent democratic politician in the Sixteenth ward, who is at present employed in the City Inspector's Department. The military minstrel's health seems to have suffered somewhat from the rigors of his late confinement on Morris Island; but his spirits remain as high as ever, and his letter of versified thanks to

Mr. Lincoln is one of the most truly humorous
things we have seen for many days. Of this pro-
duction we can only give two verses-the first and
second-O'Reilly saying that the balance (which
treats liberally of the Cabinet difficulties and the
"succession"), cannot appear until the President
gives his consent to its publication,-Private Miles
declaring that he has had his full share of punishment
for publishing rhymes without authority, and that he
is resolved never knowingly to be caught in the same
bad scrape again. His letter to the President begins:—
Long life to you, Misther Lincoln !
May you die both late an' aisy;

An' whin you lie wid the top of aich toe
Turned up to the roots of a daisy,
May this be your epitaph, nately writ—
"Though thraitors abused him vilely,
He was honest an' kindly, he loved a joke,

An' he pardoned Miles O'Reilly!"

And for this same act while I've breath in me lungs

Or a heart in me body beatin',

It's "long life to you, misther Lincoln !"

If

That meself will keep repeatin' :—

you ain't the handsomest man in the world
You've done handsome by me, an' highly;
And your name to poshterity will go down
Arm in arm wid Miles O'Reilly!

The balance of this ditty we shall hope to present to our readers at an early day, it being extremely improbable that Mr. Lincoln will make himself a party to the desire of the Navy Department to have O'Reilly's light hid under a bushel. In the meantime the "bard of Morris Island," having dabbled a little in city politics before his enlistment, and having corresponded constantly, all the time he was away, with his cousin James, who is deep in all the mysteries of the Tammany and Mozart "machines," has got off the following "inside and partic❜lar” view of the present condition of our local democratic wranglings, which may be read with amusement, and possibly with some instruction, by our fellow citizens of every stripe and hue. The "talk" in some of its paragraphs, like all other "oracular talk," may be dark to the outside heathen-the mere barbarians who have no other connexion with politics than to vote for the "machine candidates" and pay their taxes. But to the initiated, we are assured, every line and almost every syllable will convey a world of hard-headed and hard-hitting meaning. Private Miles says this last effusion of his genius is the "War Song of the Honist Dimmycrats of New York City Aginst the Chates ;" and is anxious to