Yours eternally,
L. CLIFTON
P.S. I will write more at length tomorrow.
LETTER VII
Abimelech Henley to Sir Arthur St. Ives, Baronet
Wenbourne-Hill
Most onnurable Sir, my ever onnurd Master,
The instructions[1] you wus pleased to give me have bin kept in mind.
Your onnur's commands is my duties; your precepts is my laws. For why?
Your noble onnur knows how to command, and I knows how to obey.
[Footnote 1: The editor has sometimes found it very difficult to translate the letters of this correspondent, out of bad spelling into English. Had they been left as they were written, they would have been half unintelligible. The editor however has used his own judgment, in suffering various words to retain their primitive dress; the better to preserve what would otherwise have been too much unlike its author, had the orthography been rendered perfect. It would have been assassination to have omitted any of the dialectic or cant terms, in which this honest Abimelech takes so much delight: for which reason they have been carefully retained.]
The willow dell is fillin up; all hands is at work. I keeps 'em to it. The sloap of the grande kinal will be finisht and turft over in 3 wekes; and I have chosen the younk plants for the vardunt hall: nice wons they be too, your onnur!