Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

204 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
the slips of the Chancery article. You can correct them yourself
quite well. I shall therefore expect to have ' Maga ' in my
next parcel. . . .
The above was written with the intention of being sent on
Monday, but I changed my mind, in the hope of hearing more
from Maginn. However, I think it very likely the article on
the ' Edinburgh ' may be thought too long as it is. The article
on Hayley will do quite as well next month if you haven't
room now. It is very good, however, and if you have room, by
keeping out indifferent things, tant mieux.
I have corrected a word or two in Maginn's 'Noctes,' but
not the article throughout. Don't think of sending me any
more proofs. Correct the song yourself.
Here follows a bit of gossip so entirely in the style
of Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs that we are
tempted to quote it, if for nothing else than to show
how universal that taste is, and how little the ablest
are really above the weaknesses which they pounce
upon in others with the highest relish of mockery.
Lord P. and Major F. are inscrutable :
The closing story is veritable, and I particularly wish it to
appear, in order that Lord P. and Major F. may be obliged to
tell in print, what for months past they have been talking. In
fact, I heard the story from Lord P. myself, and have only
altered a few circumstances for obvious reasons. The Arch-
deacon he called for was not our Butterfly but another ; but I
know you would like to gratify F. R. S.
This enigmatical note is printed, not for the sake of
the little social mystery dead and gone, from which
all sense has evaporated, but as a little fossilised froth,
if that might be—the sort of thing which, alas !
—
many
of the cleverest of us love, like so many chambermaids.
It is rare, however, to find in the ' Noctes ' anything
of this description.