Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

GLORIOUS SPORT. 347
improbable; for Mr Blackwood, in a very long, and
impatient letter, in which he announces that "it is
from your total ignorance of business that you think
I have made any fuss about this bill," ends by giving
it up in despair. " I hope," he says, " from this ex-
planation that you will see the thing in its proper
point of view. All I have to add on this matter is
that you need give yourself no further trouble about
this bill in the meantime. I hope the money will be
of use to you."
One more letter follows. It begins sternly :
W. Blackwood to James Hogg.
SiE,—You are so utterly ignorant of business that it is quite
unnecessary for me to attempt to show you how completely you
have misunderstood everything. ... As to the very ludicrous
affair of a prosecution I say nothing. The very idea of such a
thing certainly does " astonish " me, as it will every one who
may happen to hear of it.
Thus the connection which had been so long and so
kind would seem to have come to an end. So at
first sight of these letters the writer believed : and
so it did—for half a year,—at the end of which time
Hogg appears again unconquerable, with something
which he thinks " either of two friends whom you
know" could make " glorious sport" out of; and
which he sends to his dear Ebony, some one else
whose name is undecipherable having "positively
refused to take it on the score of sheer terror."
Mr Blackwood's letter in reply, we are glad to say,
goes back to " Dear Hogg," and the old terms of
friendship, though he is not tempted by the " glorious
sport " :
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