As to my object in keeping them, there were various rumors afloat about town, in the utterance of which, libellous as some of them were, Mrs. ---- was perhaps the loudest and most malicious; she having hinted, among other scandalous conjectures, that the soup from alligator-tail being very palatable and delicate, a speculation was afoot contemplating the supply of the northern market with that article. About this time, also, some of her lizards were missing, and thought to have found their way to the tub; but all surmises were soon cut short by the first cold night of that winter, (one of them in February,) which chilled the water so that the 'pets' next morning were quite stiff, and apparently dead. By careful nursing, however, two of them were thoroughly revived, and made to articulate distinctly; but having no thought of a second cold night in the same winter, the waters closed over them again, a thin ice shut out the air, (they had not presence of mind, I suspect, to come to the surface,) and on the morning of the second day they were quite gone. And now, in closing this history, I do not want to be uncharitable, but I suspect Mrs. ---- was privately rejoiced at their death; indeed, the whole community, otherwise very sensible and not devoid of sentiment, seemed to regret the circumstance much less than would have been expected. It will be seen, Mr. EDITOR, from this account of the alligator, that I can say nothing as to what habits he may form in after-life; what evil he may learn, what original sins he may develope and mature; what temptations his power and bloody instincts may present to him; what evil resorts he may be driven to, in an ungrateful world, when he has become case-hardened and impenetrable to outward impressions; or, in short, what contempt he may acquire for the fiddlers and cabbage-leaves of his early days. And what he may do in those vast lagoons where he is undoubtedly master, or in the black depths of the St. Johns, where the water hides the blood he may shed, and the long moss screens him from the tiger; what orgies he may celebrate, what abominations he may practice, when there is none to call him to account; all this I can only conjecture; but I conjecture on the charitable side. In the upper waters of the St. Johns I have seen them in their death-throes; huge animals, at least fifteen feet long; seen them in scores at a time, some swimming about, some tumbling in clumsily, some sprawled on shore, apparently asleep, and some raising their black claws as if to call down vengeance upon us, gnashing their teeth, and lashing the water in their death-agony; but the howlings and smothered thunder that others tell of, came not to my ears; and the exhibition, so furious to others, was to me only the involuntary muscular action of pain and dissolution. Extravagant stories are told of their great strength and tenacity of life, and wonderful exploits are recounted by the great mass who have lived since Agamemnon.