unch of bananas. They were not quite ripe, and I hung them before my
window to mature in the sun of McGinnis's Court, whose forcing
qualities were remarkable. In the mysteriously mingled odors of ship
and shore which they diffused throughout my room, there was lingering
reminiscence of low latitudes. But even that joy was fleeting and
evanescent: they never reached maturity.

Coming home one day, as I turned the corner of that fashionable
thoroughfare before alluded to, I met a small boy eating a banana. There
was nothing remarkable in that, but as I neared McGinnis's Court I
presently met another small boy, also eating a banana. A third small boy
engaged in a like occupation obtruded a painful coincidence upon my
mind. I leave the psychological reader to determine the exact
co-relation between the circumstance and the sickening sense of loss
that overcame me on witnessing it. I reached my room--the bananas were
gone.

There was but one that knew of their existence, but one who frequented
my window, but one capable of gymnastic effort to procure them, and that
was--I blush to say it--Melons. Melons the depredator--Melons, despoiled
by larger boys of his ill-gotten booty, or reckless and indiscreetly
liberal; Melons--now a fugitive on some neighborhood house-top. I lit a
cigar, and, drawing my chair to the window, sought surcease of sorrow in
the contemplation of the fish-geranium. In a few moments something white
passed my window at about the level of the edge. There was no mistaking
that hoary head, which now represented to me only aged iniquity. It was
Melons, that venerable, juvenile hypocrite.

He affected not to observe me, and would have withdrawn quietly, but
that horrible fascination which causes the murderer to revisit the scene
of his crime, impelled him toward my window. I smoked calmly, and gazed
at him without speaking. He walked several times up and down the court
with a half-rigid, half-belligerent expression of eye and shoulder,
intended to represent the carelessness of innocence.

Once or twice he stopped, and putting his arms their whole length into
his capacious trousers, gazed with some interest at the additional width
they thus acquired. Then he whistled. The singular conflicting
conditions of John Brown's body and soul were at that time beginning to
attract the attention of youth, and Melons's performance of that melody
was always remarkable. But to-day he whistled falsely and shrilly
between h