I had a faint remembrance of a boy of that euphonious name, with scarlet hair, who was a playmate and persecutor of Melons. But I said nothing. "Carrots is a bad boy. Killed a policeman onct. Wears a dirk knife in his boots, saw him to-day looking in your windy." I felt that this must end here. I rose sternly and addressed Melons. "Melons, this is all irrelevant and impertinent to the case. _You_ took those bananas. Your proposition regarding Carrots, even if I were inclined to accept it as credible information, does not alter the material issue. You took those bananas. The offense under the Statutes of California is felony. How far Carrots may have been accessory to the fact either before or after, is not my intention at present to discuss. The act is complete. Your present conduct shows the _animo furandi_ to have been equally clear." By the time I had finished this exordium, Melons had disappeared, as I fully expected. He never reappeared. The remorse that I have experienced for the part I had taken in what I fear may have resulted in his utter and complete extermination, alas, he may not know, except through these pages. For I have never seen him since. Whether he ran away and went to sea to reappear at some future day as the most ancient of mariners, or whether he buried himself completely in his trousers, I never shall know. I have read the papers anxiously for accounts of him. I have gone to the Police Office in the vain attempt of identifying him as a lost child. But I never saw him or heard of him since. Strange fears have sometimes crossed my mind that his venerable appearance may have been actually the result of senility, and that he may have been gathered peacefully to his fathers in a green old age. I have even had doubts of his existence, and have sometimes thought that he was providentially and mysteriously offered to fill the void I have before alluded to. In that hope I have written these pages. THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY" _A Logical Story_ BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. _Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.