and toiled only for this moment, and the poem is in her
pocket."

"Delightful!" said the doctor flatteringly. "Has she favored 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 color 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, whiskey, 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 muc