ing the case, I daresay it is the reader's opinion as
well as my own, that I am quite at liberty to make what use of them I
like. Concerning the poem things that came first in hand, I do not
pretend to be any judge; but James thinks he could scarcely write any
muckle better himself: so here goes; but I cannot tell you to what tune:

SONG

I

They say that other eyes are bright,
I see no eyes like thine;
So full of Heaven's serenest light,
Like midnight stars they shine.

II

They say that other cheeks are fair--
But fairer cannot glow
The rosebud in the morning air,
Or blood on mountain snow.

III

Thy voice--Oh sweet it streams to me,
And charms my raptured breast;
Like music on the moonlight sea,
When waves are lull'd to rest.

IV

The wealth of worlds were vain to give
Thy sinless heart to buy;
Oh I will bless thee while I live,
And love thee till I die!

From this song it appears a matter beyond doubt--for I know human
nature--that the flunkie's master had, in his earlier years, been deeply
in love with some beautiful young lady, that loved him again, and that
maybe, with a bounding and bursting heart, durst not let her affection be
shown, from dread of her cruel relations, who insisted on her marrying
some lord or baronet that she did not care one button about. If so,
unhappy pair, I pity them! Were we to guess our way in the dark a wee
farther, I think it not altogether unlikely, that he must have fallen in
with his sweetheart abroad, when wandering about on his travels; for what
follows seems to come as it were from her, lamenting his being called to
leave her forlorn and return home. This is all merely supposition on my
part, and in the antiquarian style, whereby much is made out of little;
but both me and James Batter are determined to be unanimously of this
opinion, until otherwise convinced to the contrary. Love is a fiery and
fierce passion every where; but I am told that we, who live in a more
favoured land, know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes
causes, and the bloody tragedies, which it has a thousand times produced,
where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his
blood heated into a raging fever, by the burning sun that glows in the
heaven above his head.

Here follows the poem of Taffy's master's foreign