96 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



heart, 1 know, is unchanged, but what like are you? 

 Are you still a handsome, slender, high-featured boy, 

 dressed in green ? John Swanson is a little black 

 manny, with a wig ; and I have been growing older, but 

 you won't believe it, for the last eighteen years. Great 

 reason to be thankful, I am still ugly as ever. Five feet 

 eleven when I straighten myself, with hair which my 

 friends call brown, and my not-friends red; features irre- 

 gular, but not at all ill-natured in the expression ; an im- 

 mense head, and a forehead three quarters of a yard across. 

 Isn't the last a good thing in these days of phrenology ? 

 And isn't it a still better thing that a bonny sweet lassie, 

 with a great deal of fine sense and a highly-cultivated 

 mind, doesn't think me too ugly to be liked very much, 

 and promises to marry me some time in spring? Do give 

 me a portrait of yourself first time you write, and, dearest 

 Finlay, don't let other seventeen years pass ere then. Is 

 it not a wonder we are both alive ? John Layfield, John 

 Mann, David Ross, Andrew Forbes, Adam McGlashan, 

 Walter Williamson, are all dead yes, Finlay, all dead. 

 Of all our cave companions, only John Swanson survives. 

 John is a capital fine fellow. He was quite as wild a boy, 

 you know, as either of ourselves, and perhaps a little 

 worse tempered ; but, growing good about twelve years 

 ago, he put himself to college with an eye to the Church, 

 and is now a missionary at Fort William. Dearest Fin- 

 lay, have you grown good too ? I was in danger of be- 

 coming a wild infidel. Argued with Uncle Sandy about 

 cause and effect and the categories ; read Hume and 

 Voltaire and Volney, and all the other witty fellows who 

 had too much sense to go to heaven; and was getting 

 nearly as much sense in that way as themselves. But 

 John cured me ; and you may now say of me what Gray 

 says of himself, " No very great wit, he believes in a 



