Spare your compassion, dear madam, there is not the least danger. The
_beaux yeux de ma casette_ are not brilliant enough to make amends for
the spectacles which must supply the dimness of my own. I am a little
deaf, too, as you know to your sorrow when we are partners; and if I
could get a nymph to marry me with all these imperfections, who the
deuce would marry Janet McEvoy? and from Janet McEvoy Chrystal
Croftangry will not part.

Miss Katie Fairscribe gave me the tale of Menie Gray with much taste and
simplicity, not attempting to suppress the feelings, whether of grief or
resentment, which justly and naturally arose from the circumstances of
the tale. Her father afterwards confirmed the principal outlines of the
story, and furnished me with some additional circumstances, which Miss
Katie had suppressed or forgotten. Indeed, I have learned on this
occasion, what old Lintot meant when he told Pope, that he used to
propitiate the critics of importance, when he had a work in the press,
by now and then letting them see a sheet of the blotted proof, or a few
leaves of the original manuscript. Our mystery of authorship has
something about it so fascinating, that if you admit any one, however
little he may previously have been disposed to such studies, into your
confidence, you will find that he considers himself as a party
interested, and, if success follows, will think himself entitled to no
inconsiderable share of the praise.

The reader has seen that no one could have been naturally less
interested than was my excellent friend Fairscribe in my lucubrations,
when I first consulted him on the subject; but since he has contributed
a subject to the work, he has become a most zealous coadjutor; and
half-ashamed, I believe, yet half-proud of the literary stock-company,
in which he has got a share, he never meets me without jogging my elbow,