man was gifted with "gorgis abilities," and it is a
happiness to me to embalm the memory of their luster in these columns.
If it were not that the poet crop is unusually large and rank in
California this year, I would encourage you to continue writing, Simon
Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you to enter
against so much opposition.

"PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR."--NO; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at
par.

"MELTON MOWBRAY," Dutch Flat.--This correspondent sends a lot of
doggerel, and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat. I
give a specimen verse:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold;
And the sheen of his spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.**

**This piece of pleasantry, published in a San Francisco paper, was
mistaken by the country journals for seriousness, and many and loud
were the denunciations of the ignorance of author and editor, in not
knowing that the lines in question were "written by Byron."

There, that will do. That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it
won't do in the metropolis. It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like
butter milk gurgling from a jug. What the people ought to have is
something spirited--something like "Johnny Comes Marching Home." However
keep on practising, and you may succeed yet. There is genius in you, but
too much blubber.

"ST. CLAIR HIGGINS." Los Angeles.--"My life is a failure; I have
adored, wildly, madly, and she whom I love has turned coldly from me
and shed her affections upon another. What would you advise me to
do?"

You should set your affections on another also--or on several, if there
are enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former
flame unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the
happier a girl is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover
she has blighted. Don't allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as
that. The more cause that girl finds to regret that she did not marry
you, the more comfortable you will feel over it. It isn't poetical, but
it is mighty sound doctrine.

"ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"If it would take a cannon-ball
3 and 1/3 seconds to travel four miles, and 3 and 3/8 seconds to
travel the next four, and 3 a