TIFTH EMPTYING, 77 



The Editor to his fair correspondent : 



" MADAM, If you will forgive me saying so, you are living 

 in what Douglas Jerrold called the kitchen of imagination. 

 It is all right about the grayling fishing ; many are cold, but 

 few are frozen. I have, however, published your letter, and 

 am now busy 'contemplating* Frank's delight when he 

 reads it." 



" SIR, After my last letter to you, Frank was very rude, 

 and called me horrible names. He said I was cacoethes 

 scvibendi; and, as he will not tell me what it means, I know 

 it must imply something shocking. Indeed, he went on so 

 that I almost made up my mind to write and let you know 

 the trouble I had got into, and I told him so. Whereupon 

 he said there was no stopping a woman when she began, 

 whether it was talking or writing, it did not matter. If she 

 had * amen ' to say, she would not say it under four pages 

 of notepaper ; and I was never so hurt in my life as when 

 he coolly told me one of the reasons why a merciful 

 Providence had given women no beards was because they 

 could not hold their tongues long enough to be shaved as if 

 Providence ever thought of such a thing. And then I wrote 

 and asked mother to come and stay with us, just to serve 

 him out, because she can keep him in his proper place, and 

 the next night he came home with a bagpipes, and said he 

 was going to learn the instrument, because he knew mother 

 was fond of music. He practised on the fearful aftair for 

 two hours the first night, when a note came in from Mrs. 

 Brown, who lives next door, to say if Frank was no better 

 in the morning she thought he had better be taken to the 

 infirmary. This made him worse than ever, and he 

 continued to make such horrible noises that two or three of 

 the neighbours begged of him to desist, and I promised to 

 telegraph to mother not to come on any account on condition 



