ide, genius, or guardian to one so
young and guileless? Could you be the Mentor to this Telemachus? Think
of the temptations of a metropolis. Look at the question well, and
let me know speedily; for I've got him as far as this place, and he's
kicking up an awful row in the hotel-yard, and rattling his chain like a
maniac. Let me know by telegraph at once.

"SYLVESTER.

"P.S.--Of course he's grown a little, and doesn't take things always as
quietly as he did. He dropped rather heavily on two of Watson's 'purps'
last week, and snatched old Watson himself bald headed, for interfering.
You remember Watson? For an intelligent man, he knows very little of
California fauna. How are you fixed for bears on Montgomery Street, I
mean in regard to corrals and things? S.

"P.P.S.--He's got some new tricks. The boys have been teaching him to
put up his hands with them. He slings an ugly left. S."

I am afraid that my desire to possess myself of Baby overcame all other
considerations; and I telegraphed an affirmative at once to Sylvester.
When I reached my lodgings late that afternoon, my landlady was awaiting
me with a telegram. It was two lines from Sylvester,--

"All right. Baby goes down on night-boat. Be a father to him. S."

It was due, then, at one o'clock that night. For a moment I was
staggered at my own precipitation. I had as yet made no preparations,
had said nothing to my landlady about her new guest. I expected to
arrange every thing in time; and now, through Sylvester's indecent
haste, that time had been shortened twelve hours.

Something, however, must be done at once. I turned to Mrs. Brown. I
had great reliance in her maternal instincts: I had that still greater
reliance common to our sex in the general tender-heartedness of pretty
women. But I confess I was alarmed. Yet, with a feeble smile, I tried
to introduce the subject with classical ease and lightness. I even said,
"If Shakspeare's Athenian clown, Mrs. Brown, believed that a lion among
ladies was a dreadful thing, what must"--But here I broke down; for
Mrs. Brown, with the awful intuition of her sex, I saw at once was
more occupied with my manner than my speech. So I tried a business
brusquerie, and, placing the telegram in her hand, said hurriedly, "We
must do something about this at once. It's perfectly absurd; but he will
be here at one to-night. Beg thousand pardons; but business prevented my
speaking before"--and paused out of breath and cour