LETTER III

DARSIE LATIMER TO ALAN FAIRFORD

SHEPHERD'S BUSH.

I have received thine absurd and most conceited epistle. It is
well for thee that, Lovelace and Belford-like, we came under a
convention to pardon every species of liberty which we may take
with each other; since, upon my word, there are some reflections
in your last which would otherwise have obliged me to return
forthwith to Edinburgh, merely to show you I was not what you
took me for.

Why, what a pair of prigs hast thou made of us! I plunging into
scrapes, without having courage to get out of them--thy sagacious
self, afraid to put one foot before the other, lest it should run
away from its companion; and so standing still like a post, out
of mere faintness and coldness of heart, while all the world were
driving full speed past thee. Thou a portrait-painter! I tell
thee, Alan, I have seen a better seated on the fourth round of a
ladder, and painting a bare-breeched Highlander, holding a pint-
stoup as big as himself, and a booted Lowlander, in a bobwig,
supporting a glass of like dimensions; the whole being designed
to represent the sign of the Salutation.

How hadst thou the heart to represent thine own individual self,
with all thy motions, like those of a great Dutch doll, depending