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villainous "moral statistics?" Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back in my absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlour stove.

"Young Author."—Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorous in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat—at least, not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales.

"Simon Wheeler," Sonora.—The following simple and touching remarks and accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region of Sonora:—

To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry under the name and style of "He Done His Level Best," was one among the whitest men I ever see, and it an't every man that knowed him that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is busted and gone home to the States. He was here in an early day, and he was the handyest man about takin' holt of anything that come along you most ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, stirrin' cretur always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him do anything by halvers. Preachin' was his nateral