“I received to-day your interesting communication, and have written to Edinburgh to remit the price of this troop as soon as possible. I can make this out without troubling Mr Bayley; but it will pare my nails short for the summer, and I fear prevent my paying your carriage, as I had intended.
“Nicol is certainly going to sell Faldonside.* The Nabal asks L.40,000,—at least L.5000 too much. Yet in the present low rate of money, and general thirst for land, there is no saying but he may get a fool to offer
* See ante, Vol. iv. p. 303. |
| APRIL, 1825. | 19 |
“I conclude, this being 27th April, that you are all snugly settled in Dublin. I am a little afraid of the gaieties for Jane, and hope she will be gay moderately that she may be gay long. The frequent habit of late hours is always detrimental to health, and sometimes has consequences which last for life. Avis au lecteur; of course I do not expect you to shut yourselves up at your period of life. Your course of gaiety at Cork reminds me of Jack Johnstone’s song—
|
‘Then we’ll visit the Callaghans, Brallaghans,
Nowlans, and Dowlans likewise,
And bother them all with the beauty
Which streams from my Judy’s
(or Jeanie’s) black eyes.’
|
“We have better accounts of little Johnnie of late—his cough is over for the present, and the learned cannot settle whether it has been the hooping-cough or no. Sophia talks of taking him to Germiston. Lockhart comes here for the Circuit, and I expect him to-morrow.
“Sir Adam and
Lady Ferguson bring most excellent
accounts of Mrs Jobson’s good
health and spirits. Sir Henry Jardine
(he writes himself no less now) hath had the dignity of knighthood inflicted on
him. Mamma and Anne join in kind love. I expect a long letter from Jane one of these days soon; she writes too
well not to
| 20 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“You have never said a word of your horses, nor how you have come on with your domestics, those necessary plagues of our life. Two or three days since, that cub of Sir Adam’s chose to amuse himself with flinging crackers about the hall here when we were at dinner. I think I gave him a proper jobation.
“Here is the first wet day we have had—very welcome, as the earth required it much, and the season was backward. I can hear Bogie whistling for joy.
