If, Honoured Sir, you feel disposed to bolster yourself up with the wet blanket of a non possumus, and reply to me that your existing quill-drivers are too fat-witted and shallow-pated for the production of more pretentiously polished lucubrations—aye, not even if they burn the night-light oil and hear the chimes at midnight! I will not be hoodwinked by the superficiality of your cui bono, and shall make you the answer that I am willing for an exceedingly paltry honorarium to rush into the Gordian knot and write you the most superior essays on every conceivable and inconceivable subject under the sun, as per enclosed samples which I forward respectfully for your delightful and golden opinions, guaranteeing faithfully that all of your readers in every hemisphere and postal district will fall in love with such a new departure and fresh tack.
The specimens I send are not my best, only very ordinary and humdrum affairs—but ex pede Herculem! Hon'ble Sir, and you will see how transcendentally superior are even such poor effusions compared to the fiddle-faddle and gim-crack style of article with which you are being fobbed off by puzzle-headed and self-opiniated nincompoops.
I can also turn out rhymed poetry after models of Poets Tennyson, Cowper, Mrs Hemans, Southey, & Co., done to a tittle, so as not to be detected, even by the cynosure, as mere spurious imitation, but in every respect up to the mark and the real Simon Pure.
Therefore, Hon'ble Sir, do not hesitate to strike while the iron is incandescent and bleed freely, even if it should be necessary, prior to engaging your humble petitioner's services, to turn out one or more of your present contributioners crop and heels, and lay them on the shelf of their own incompetencies. Remember that the slightest act of volition on your part can exalt my pecuniary status to the skies, as well as confer distinguished and unparagoned ennoblement upon your cacoëthes scribendi.
I remain, respected Sir, Your most obsequious Servant,
Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A.
P.S. and N.B.—Being so unacquainted with the limner's art, I cannot at present undertake the etching of caricatures et hoc genus omne. However, if such is your will, Hon'ble Sir, I will take the cow by the horns, after preliminary course of instruction at Government Art School, all expenses, &c., to be defrayed on the nail out of your purse of Fortunatus, seeing that your esteemed correspondent is so hard up between two stools that he is reduced to a choice of Hodson's Horse!
H. B. J.