Originally born in Massachusetts, but for twenty-one years a native of California and partially bald, possessing a cosmopolitan nature that loved an English shilling as well, in proportion to its value, as a Mexican dollar, the subject of our memoir was one whom it was an honour to know, and whose close friendship was a luxury that only the affluent could afford.  It shall even be the writer’s proudest boast that he enjoyed it at less than half the usual rates.

The circumstances attending his taking off were most mournful.  He had been for some time very much depressed in spirits of one kind and another, and on last Wednesday morning was observed to be foaming at the mouth.  No attention was paid to this; his family believing it to be a symptom of hydrophobia, with which he had been afflicted from the cradle.  Suddenly a dark-eyed stranger entered the house, took the patient’s neck between his thumb and forefinger, threw the body across his shoulder, winked respectfully to the bereaved widow, and withdrew by way of the kitchen cellar.  Farewell, pure soul! we shall meet again.

....  We are reluctantly compelled to relate the untimely death of Mrs. Margaret Ann Picklefinch, which occurred about one o’clock yesterday morning.  The circumstances attending the melancholy event were these:—­

Just before the hour named, her husband, the well-known temperance lecturer, and less generally known temperance lecturee, came home from an adjourned meeting of the Cold-Water Legion, and retired very drunk.  His estimable lady got up and pulled off his boots, as usual.  He got into bed and she lay down beside him.  She uttered a mild preliminary oath of endearment and suddenly ceased speaking.  It must have been about this time she died.  About daylight he invited her to get up and make a fire.  Detecting no movement in her body he enforced family discipline.  The peculiar hard sound of his wife striking the floor first aroused his suspicions of the bereavement he had sustained, and upon rising later in the day he found his first fears realized; the lady had waived her claim to his further protection.

We extend to Mr. P. our sincere sympathy in the greatest calamity that can befall an unmarriageable man.  The inconsolable survivor called at our office last evening, conversed feelingly some moments about the virtues of the dear departed, and left with the air of a dog that has had his tail abbreviated and is forced to begin life anew.  Truly the decrees of Providence appear sometimes absurd.

....  Mr. Bildad Gorcas, whose death has cast a wet blanket of gloom over our community, was a man comparatively unknown, but his life furnishes an instructive lesson to fast livers.  Mr. Gorcas never in his life tasted ardent spirits, ate spiced meats, or sat up later than nine o’clock in the evening.  He rose, summer and winter, at two A. M., and passed an hour and three quarters immersed in ice water.  For the last twenty years he has walked fifteen miles