Breakfasted upon hominy and syrup, fresh-made from H----'s plantation, with alternate mouthfuls of--you can't think, Sir--straw-berries and cream! Large, ripe straw-berries, just gathered by a pretty girl and some one to help her, from the garden of Father Williams. Had a pleasant sail on the St. John's after breakfast, and took the cool of the morning for a ride through the barrens to Augustine, where I have been all day running about town, half out of breath, dropping broken and hurried words on the familiar thresholds, with ejaculations of 'Oh Lord!' and 'God bless you!' and some things quite inarticulate and impossible to write; _inspirations_, so to speak; after all which I am just now returned, freighted with pleasant thoughts, to my closed windows, coal-fires, and other northerly necessities. But for this, Sir, I thought to have done with these 'Sketches,' as I like not that ambitious heading. 'Gossip' would have been better, Sir, and more appropriate; and under that modest title you would not have used the unintelligible stars that blaze to so little purpose in my last paper. Ah! Sir, you should have considered how difficult it is to gape--shocking word!--to gape gracefully! And now to your queries: 'Is the alligator fond of his grandmother? Does he devour his children? Does he hanker after little niggers? Is he wholly depraved and given up to the sins of the flesh, or hath he some social and playful qualities? And, lastly, what are his habits of life?' You have given me quite too long a text, Sir: the more especially as I think, that upon most of these points the animal is decidedly non-committal; but not to hesitate for a single moment in answering your implied slanders, I declare, in short, that if the alligator affect his grandmother, it is not made public; and if he grieveth after little niggers, there are no leavings of evidence; as I take it, he hath no partialities, no mincing of morsels, no preference of parts.