I have made this letter much too long, and have said many things in it I never intended saying, and omitted much I had hoped to be able to say. But I must end.
Yours ever affectionately,
J. Brown.
“MYSTIFICATIONS.”
“Health to the auld wife, and weel mat she be,
That busks her fause rock wi’ the lint o’ the lee (lie),
Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine,
Wynds aye the richt pirn into the richt line.”
“MYSTIFICATIONS.”[32]
Those who knew the best of Edinburgh society eight-and-thirty years ago—and when was there ever a better than that best?—must remember the personations of an old Scottish gentlewoman by Miss Stirling Graham, one of which, when Lord Jeffrey was victimized, was famous enough to find its way into Blackwood, but in an incorrect form.
Miss Graham’s friends have for years urged her to print for them her notes of these pleasant records of the harmless and heart-easing mirth of bygone times; to this she has at last assented, and the result is this entertaining, curious, and beautiful little quarto, in which her friends will recognize the strong understanding and goodness, the wit and invention, and fine pawky humor of the much-loved and warmhearted representative of Viscount Dundee—the terrible Clavers.[33] They will recall that blithe and winning face, sagacious and sincere, that kindly, cheery voice, that rich and quiet laugh, that mingled sense and sensibility, which all met, and still, to our happiness, meet in her, who, with all her gifts and keen perception of the odd, and power of embodying it, never gratified her consciousness of these powers, or ever played