shore which they diffused throughout my room, there was a 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 this circumstance and the sickening sense of loss
that overcame me on witnessing it. I reached my room--and found the
bunch of bananas was gone.

There was but one who knew of their existence, but one who frequented
my window, but one capable of the 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 neighboring
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He affected not to observe me, and would have withdrawn quietly, but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,