est for another time.
Perhaps I may delay further communication till I learn how my favours
are valued.

LETTER V

ALAN FAIRFORD TO DARSIE LATIMER

I have thy two last epistles, my dear Darsie, and expecting the third,
have been in no hurry to answer them. Do not think my silence ought to
be ascribed to my failing to take interest in them, for, truly, they
excel (though the task was difficult) thy usual excellings. Since
the moon-calf who earliest discovered the Pandemonium of Milton in an
expiring wood-fire--since the first ingenious urchin who blew bubbles
out of soap and water, thou, my best of friends, hast the highest knack
at making histories out of nothing. Wert thou to plant the bean in the
nursery-tale, thou wouldst make out, so soon as it began to germinate,
that the castle of the giant was about to elevate its battlements on the
top of it. All that happens to thee gets a touch of the wonderful and
the sublime from thy own rich imagination. Didst ever see what artists
call a Claude Lorraine glass, which spreads its own particular hue over
the whole landscape which you see through it?--thou beholdest ordinary
events just through such a medium.

I have looked carefully at the facts of thy last long letter, and they
are just such as might have befallen any little truant of the High
School, who had got down to Leith Sands, gone beyond the PRAWN-DUB, wet
his hose and shoon, and, finally, had been carried home, in compassion,
by some high-kilted fishwife, cursing all the while the trouble which
the brat occasioned her.

I admire the figure which thou must have made, clinging for dear life
behind the old fellow's back--thy jaws chattering with fear, thy muscles
cramped with anxiety. Thy execrable supper of broiled salmon, which was
enough to ensure the nightmare's regular visits for a twelvemonth,
may be termed a real affliction; but as for the storm of Thursday
last (such, I observe, was the date), it roared, whistled, howled, and
bellowed, as fearfully amongst the old chimney-heads in the Candlemaker
Row, as it could on the Solway shore, for the very wind of it--TESTE ME
PER TOTAM NOCTEM VIGILANTE. And then in the morning again, when--Lord
help you--in your sentimental delicacy you bid the poor man adieu,
without even tendering him half a crown for supper and lodging!

You laugh at me for giving a penny (to be accurate, though, thou
shouldst have said sixpence) to an old fellow, whom thou, in thy high