I had a faint remembrance of a boy of that euphonious name, with scarlet hair, who was a playmate and persecutor of Melons. But I said nothing. "Carrots is a bad boy. Killed a policeman onct. Wears a dirk knife in his boots. Saw him to-day looking in your windy." I felt that this must end here. I rose sternly and addressed Melons. "Melons, this is all irrelevant and impertinent to the case. _You_ took those bananas. Your proposition regarding Carrots, even if I were inclined to accept it as credible information, does not alter the material issue. You took those bananas. The offense under the statutes of California is felony. How far Carrots may have been accessory to the fact either before or after it is not my intention at present to discuss. The act is complete. Your present conduct shows the _animo furandi_ to have been equally clear." By the time I had finished this exordium Melons had disappeared, as I fully expected. He never reappeared. The remorse that I have experienced for the part I had taken in what I fear may have resulted in his utter and complete extermination, alas! he may not know, except through these pages. For I have never seen him since. Whether he ran away and went to sea to reappear at some future day as the most ancient of mariners, or whether he buried himself completely in his trousers, I never shall know. I have read the papers anxiously for accounts of him. I have gone to the police office in the vain attempt of identifying him as a lost child. But I never saw him or heard of him since. Strange fears have sometimes crossed my mind that his venerable appearance may have been actually the result of senility, and that he may have been gathered peacefully to his fathers in a green old age. I have even had doubts of his existence, and have sometimes thought that he was providentially and mysteriously offered to fill the void I have before alluded to. In that hope I have written these pages.--_Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands, and other Sketches._ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL A LETTER FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGELOW Thrash away, you'll _hev_ to rattle On them kittle-drums o' yourn, 'Tain't a knowin' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with moldy corn; Put in stiff, you fifer feller, Let folks see how spry you be-- Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore you git a-hold o' me! Thet air flag's a leetle rotten, Hope it ain't your Sunday's best-- Fact! it takes a sight o' cotton To stuff out a soger's chest; Sence we farmers hev to pay fer't, Ef you must wear humps like these S'posin' you should try salt hay fer't, It would du ez slick ez grease. 'Twouldn't suit them Southun fellers, They're a dreffle graspin' set, We must ollers blow the bellers Wen they want their irons het; Maybe it's all right ez preachin', But _my_ narves it kind o' grates, Wen I see the overreachin' O' them nigger-drivin' States.