He’d yank a sinner outen (Hades),**
                    And land him with the blest;
                    Then snatch a prayer’n waltz in again,
                    And do his level best.

     **Here I have taken a slight liberty with the original Ms.  “Hades”
     does not make such good meter as the other word of one syllable, but
     it sounds better.

                    He’d cuss and sing and howl and pray,
                    And dance and drink and jest,
                    And lie and steal—­all one to him—­
                    He done his level best.

                    Whate’er this man was sot to do,
                    He done it with a zest;
                    No matter what his contract was,
                    he’d do his level best.

Verily, this 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.