Dear Stumparumper,
Don't rub your eyes at that word, Bedford, as if you were slopy. The purport of this letter, which is to be as precious as the Punic scenes in Plautus, is to give you some account (though but an imperfect one) of the language spoken in this house by ... and invented by her. I have carefully composed a vocabulary of it by the help of her daughter and mine, having my ivory tablets always ready when she is red-raggifying in full confabulumpatus.
31. To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq:
Keswick, Oct. 7, 1821.
My dear G,
I very much approve your laudable curiosity to know the precise meaning of that noble word horsemangandering. Before I tell you its application, you must be informed of its history and origin. Be it therefore known unto you that ... the whole and sole inventor of the never-to-be-forgotten lingo grande (in which, by the bye, I purpose ere long to compose a second epistle), thought proper one day to call my daughter a great horsemangander, thinking, I suppose, that that appellation contained as much unfeminine meaning as could be put into any decent compound. From this substantive the verb has been formed to denote an operation performed by the said daughter upon the said aunt, of which I was an astonished spectator. The horsemangander—that is to say, Edith May—being tall and strong, came behind the person to be horsemangandered (to wit, ...), and took her round the waist, under the arms, then jumped with her all the way from the kitchen into the middle of the parlour; the motion of the horsemangandered person at every jump being something like that of a paviour's rammer, and all resistance impossible.
32. To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq:
Keswick, Oct. 8, 1821.
* * * * *
P.S. The name of the newly-discovered language (of which I have more to say hereafter) is the lingo grande.