His age was about seven.  He looked older, from the venerable whiteness of his head, and it was impossible to conjecture his size, as he always wore clothes apparently belonging to some shapely youth of nineteen.  A pair of pantaloons, that, when sustained by a single suspender, completely equipped him, formed his every-day suit.  How, with this lavish superfluity of clothing, he managed to perform the surprising gymnastic feats it has been my privilege to witness, I have never been able to tell.  His “turning the crab,” and other minor dislocations, were always attended with success.  It was not an unusual sight at any hour of the day to find Melons suspended on a line, or to see his venerable head appearing above the roofs of the outhouses.  Melons knew the exact height of every fence in the vicinity, its facilities for scaling, and the possibility of seizure on the other side.  His more peaceful and quieter amusements consisted in dragging a disused boiler by a large string, with hideous outcries, to imaginary fires.

Melons was not gregarious in his habits.  A few youth of his own age sometimes called upon him, but they eventually became abusive, and their visits were more strictly predatory incursions for old bottles and junk which formed the staple of McGinnis’s Court.  Overcome by loneliness one day, Melons inveigled a blind harper into the court.  For two hours did that wretched man prosecute his unhallowed calling, unrecompensed, and going round and round the court, apparently under the impression that it was some other place, while Melons surveyed him from an adjoining fence with calm satisfaction.  It was this absence of conscientious motives that brought Melons into disrepute with his aristocratic neighbors.  Orders were issued that no child of wealthy and pious parentage should play with him.  This mandate, as a matter of course, invested Melons with a fascinating interest to them.  Admiring glances were cast at Melons from nursery windows.  Baby fingers beckoned to him.  Invitations to tea (on wood and pewter) were lisped to him from aristocratic back-yards.  It was evident he was looked upon as a pure and noble being, untrammelled by the conventionalities of parentage, and physically as well as mentally exalted above them.  One afternoon an unusual commotion prevailed in the vicinity of McGinnis’s Court.  Looking from my window I saw Melons perched on the roof of a stable, pulling up a rope by which one “Tommy,” an infant scion of an adjacent and wealthy house, was suspended in mid-air.  In vain the female relatives of Tommy congregated in the back-yard, expostulated with Melons; in vain the unhappy father shook his fist at him.  Secure in his position, Melons redoubled his exertions and at last landed Tommy on the roof.  Then it was that the humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been acting in collusion with Melons.  He grinned delightedly back at his parents, as if “by merit raised to that bad eminence.”  Long