SUNDAY, DEC. 6. Mr. Sargent, who came out in the Congress in the capacity of clerk to the purser, and who had been left here several weeks since for the restoration of his mind and health, was missed from his quarters on Tuesday last. He has been laboring for some time under mental aberrations which wear a reasoning show, and which alarm only the close observer. His amiable disposition and exemplary life exempted him from all reproach, and have excited a general sympathy and concern for his uncertain fate. He was last seen winding his way through the forest which skirts Monterey, towards a ledge of rocks which overhangs the boiling surf of the bay. I have traversed the beach for miles, and watched each swell as it rolled in, to see if it bore on its crest aught like a human form. But nothing came to the shore or eddied in the surge, to resolve mystery and give a painful certainty to doubt. The sea itself is an awful mystery, and becomes doubly so when the fate of one we loved is locked in the tongueless silence of its unfathomed depths. The waves tell not the fate of those On whom their hasty waters close; But deeper still their secrets spread, That travel with their drifting dead. MONDAY, DEC. 7. The simplest article for the table is often beyond the reach of your money here. I have found it so difficult to procure a few eggs, when required, that I have at last gone to keeping hens. I purchased six of an Indian woman for six dollars, and a rooster for fifty cents. On asking the woman why she charged only half price for the rooster, she replied that the fellow laid no eggs, and as for his crowing that did nobody any good. Sounder reasons than these could not be furnished in a much higher place than a hencoop. The habits of these hens are a little singular. They are perfectly tame, and are as much at home in the kitchen as the cook. They never trouble themselves much about a nest, but deposite their eggs where they find it most convenient; one takes the tea-tray, another the ironing-table, a third the oven, and there is one that always gets into the cradle. She is not at all disturbed by the tossing of the little fellow on whose premises she is obtruding. Neither she nor any of her feathered sisters cackle when they leave the nest. They don’t seem to think that any thing worth making an ado about has come to pass. The rooster, it is true, perks up a little, and perhaps feels a feather taller. But this is the vanity of his sex. There are a great many who crow over what others have done.