Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

[COMMUNICATION.]

MR. PRINTER,

An answer that has appeared to my little communication respecting the *******. ***** has absolutely filled me with amazement, inasmuch as it has come from a quarter totally unexpected! I should not have troubled you again on so trifling a subject, had not my respondent, regardless of the first lesson of sharp shooters (that of keeping concealed and taking good aim) come gallantly out into high ground, and espoused a cause which, in the heat of his zeal, he deemed his own, but in fact had nothing to do with !! Yet as I still bear in mind a favorite proverb of my good old grandmother (and she knew as much of human nature, Heaven rest her soul, as any woman in Christendom) that "the sin of ignorance should be winked at" --so I feel it my duty, notwithstanding his "retort courteous" of "false," "malicious," &c. to take him by the hand and set him right, by telling him he is wrong. He no doubt concluded that the squib could not possibly be aimed at anybody else, because the number of asterisks happened to tally with the letters of "Rifle Company." Perhaps it would not have been amiss for him to have considered whether there were not other companies in town on whom the said asterisks will bear as well as on his? A Comic Company, Thespian Club, Music Society, &c. from their number of letters, are as susceptible of the application as his Company. These, however, I acquit, being persuaded that none of them would be as pliant as the young son of Jesse to go up and play before the modern Saul, even though the evil spirit on him were ever so malignant. Now (as I am in an accommodating mood) suppose my friend were to count the letters in the word "ALEXANDRIANS," and if they come within a rifle shot of the number of asterisks, let him bethink himself whether select parties for a jaunt are ever made up by putting their names on paper!! "Look at a lame horse and he will wince," is another of my old granny's proverbs. I am done ;-- unless the gentleman "draw his bow at a venture" again, and the arrow come whizzing round my ears--in that case I may possibly be induced to look into the nature of that patriotism which is to draw him up to the great Sanhedrim.