CONTENTS PAGE TRUTH WHIPS FICTION. 2 STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR. 7 ICE CREAM. 7 SUPERVISOR BLUNT. 10 FUN, AND SUN, AND SHADE. 11 OUR BELOVED BRETHREN OF THE PRESS. 12 LIFE OF STEPHEN H. BRANCH. 12 [Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR. Volume I.—No. 3.] SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1858. [Price 2 Cents.] STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR. Truth Whips Fiction. _Love and Sin.—Fatality of the Metropolis.—Domestic Vices.—Virgins Beware.—Parsons Profess too much, and Practice too little.—“We must be Cruel to be Kind.”—A Terrible Example.—Let Sacred Teachers Warn their precarious Daughters to Avoid the Snares of Music and Fiction._ In the shades of twilight, amid the perfume of the sunny zones, sat a pale and attenuated student from the northern climes, musing of his native vales and hills, and the sweet idol of his heart, whose latest thoughts he had just perused. He had consumed too much midnight oil at college, and his health was gone, and he sought the towering bluffs of Natchez for restoration, where he was a sophomoric pastor. The figs, and flowers, and balmy breezes restored his health, and he returned to his native latitudes, and married one of Eve’s most fascinating posterity. He preached In dale and vill, And shore and hill, and came to the metropolis, and cast a gauntlet to Dr. Wainwright on bishops and crinoline, which made owls screech, and worms squirm, and frogs sing, and alligators grimly grin, and snakes and toads hiss and belch sepulchrals. Wainwright boldly seized the gauntlet shaft, and the sacred pugilists closed like panthers, and the people hissed, and laughed, and applauded, as the battle raged, and Bennett filled the air with his most comic darts, which made the _Herald_ sell like Slievegammon news. We had worms and boils, and salt rheum, and ate Graham-bread and mush, and slept with Horace Greeley in Barclay street, till our bones did rattle, and we could not laugh beyond a whisper, and Our shanks were so thin, That negroes did grin, And, as we passed by, Dogs and cats did cry.