y, what are his habits of life?' You have
given me quite too long a text, Sir: the more especially as I think, that
upon most of these points the animal is decidedly non-committal; but not
to hesitate for a single moment in answering your implied slanders, I
declare, in short, that if the alligator affect his grandmother, it is not
made public; and if he grieveth after little niggers, there are no
leavings of evidence; as I take it, he hath no partialities, no mincing of
morsels, no preference of parts.

I wish you to observe, Sir, at the start, that I have no resentments to
gratify, no vengeance to wreak, no sins to compare, allegatorically. I am
not rejoiced at being able to say, after some miserable deed, 'So does the
alligator.' Nor do I think it necessary to impute evil from the difficulty
of proving it. Such, to be sure, is the way of the world. The loftier, the
more unimpeachable the character, the greater is the probability that it
contain some hidden vice, some reach of horror quite worthy of
concealment; and so it is, that after much sinning ourselves, (not
before,) we attain to the relish of gossip, the deliciousness of scandal.
A scandal proved, the excitement is over; but to imagine, to wonder, to
embellish, to hover with a sneer, or a tear, as the humor happens, over a
probable enormity, is the devil's own pleasure, and to a taste properly
matured, said to be very delectable. It is in this manner that unthinking
fathers have amused themselves and their children with stories of an
animal which on _close_ acquaintance they would treat with far more
respect.

Pardon my gossipry, ah! kindest of Editors! while I ask if you believe in
the lastingness of primary impressions? And furthermore, is a countenance
pleasant or otherwise from the humor with which you regard it? Is a place
forever associated with the rain or sun that falls upon it at your first
acquaintance? In running over the brightest of my pleasant days at St.
Augustine, and there are few links wanting in that brilliant chain, I am
just now reminded of lounging one morning at the market, with mind and
waistcoat thrown open to all sunny impressions, when I observed afar off a
small colored gentleman, who was coming toward me with a directness of
motion quite unusual to people of his class.

As the morning was a little breezy and he had but one simple garment,
rudiment, so to speak, between him and the outer world, I attributed his
precision and firmn