rmured Francesca. "She has
lived and toiled only for this moment, and the poem is in her pocket."

"Delightful!" said the doctor flatteringly. "Has she favoured you
already? Have you heard it, Miss Monroe?"

"Have we heard it!" ejaculated that young person. "We have heard nothing
else all the morning! What you will take for local colour is nothing
but our mental life-blood, which she has mercilessly drawn to stain her
verses. We each tried to write a Scottish poem, and as Miss Hamilton's
was better, or perhaps I might say less bad, than ours, we encouraged
her to develop and finish it. I wanted to do an imitation of Lindsay's

'Adieu, Edinburgh! thou heich triumphant town,
Within whose bounds richt blithefull have I been!

but it proved too difficult. Miss Hamilton's general idea was that we
should write some verses in good plain English. Then we were to take
out all the final g's, and indeed the final letters from all the words
wherever it was possible, so that full, awful, call, ball, hall, and
away should be fu', awfu', ca', ba', ha', an' awa'. This alone gives
great charm and character to a poem; but we were also to change all
words ending in ow into aw. This doesn't injure the verse, you see, as
blaw and snaw rhyme just as well as blow and snow, beside bringing tears
to the common eye with their poetic associations. Similarly, if we had
daughter and slaughter, we were to write them dochter and slauchter,
substituting in all cases doon, froon, goon, and toon, for down, frown
gown, and town. Then we made a list of Scottish idols,--pet words,
national institutions, stock phrases, beloved objects,--convinced if
we could weave them in we should attain 'atmosphere.' Here is the first
list; it lengthened speedily: thistle, tartan, haar, haggis, kirk,
claymore, parritch, broom, whin, sporran, whaup, plaid, scone, collops,
whisky, mutch, cairngorm, oatmeal, brae, kilt, brose, heather. Salemina
and I were too devoted to common-sense to succeed in this weaving
process, so Penelope triumphed and won the first prize, both for that
and also because she brought in a saying given us by Miss Dalziel, about
the social classification of all Scotland into 'the gentlemen of the
North, men of the South, people of the West, fowk o' Fife, and the
Paisley bodies.' We think that her success came chiefly from her writing
the verses with a Scotch plaid lead-pencil. What effect the absorption
of so much red, blue, and green paint will