MY DEAR SQUIB:--I imagine your pathetic inquiry as to my whereabouts--pathetic, not to say hypothetic--for I am now where I cannot hear the dulcet strains of your voice. I am on board ship. I am half seas over. I am bound for California by way of the Isthmus. I am going for the gold, my boy, the gold. In the mean time I am lying around loose on the deck of this magnificent vessel, the _Mercy G. Tarbox,_ of Nantucket, bred by _Noah's Ark_ out of _Pilot-boat,_ dam by _Mudscow_ out of _Raging Canawl._ The _Mercy G. Tarbox_ is one of the best boats of Nantucket, and Captain Clearstarch is one of the best captains all along shore--although, friend Squibob, I feel sure that you are about to observe that a captain with a name like that would give any one the blues. But don't do it, Squib! Spare me this once. But as a matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It was blue on the _Mercy G.--_mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my back-bone to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I get along all right. We have formed a little temperance society--just we three, you know--to see if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of the captain's liquors is most dangerous, so that we can take the pledge not to touch it. One of them is a chemist or a metallurgist, or something scientific. The other is a gentleman. The chemist or metallurgist or something scientific is Professor Titus Peebles, who is going out to prospect for gold. He feels sure that his professional training will give him the inside track in the gulches and gold mines. He is a smart chap. He invented the celebrated "William Riley Baking Powder"--bound to rise up every time. And here I must tell you a little circumstance. As I was coming down to the dock in New York, to go aboard the _Mercy G.,_ a small boy was walloping a boy still smaller; so I made peace, and walloped them both. And then they both began heaving rocks at me--one of which I caught dexterously in the dexter hand. Yesterday, as I was pacing the deck with the professor, I put my hand in my pocket and found this stone. So I asked the professor what it was. He looked at it and said it was gneiss. "Is it?" said I. "Well, if a small but energetic youth had taken you on the back of the head with it, you would not think it so nice!"