[_Saranac Lake_, _Spring_ 1888.]
DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,—For O, man, I cannae read
your name!—That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter
sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let my correspondence
accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in,
overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about.
Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of
my conscience, above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood’s guide,
the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I call it my
view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also Christ’s. However,
all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere
pleasure afforded by your charming letter. I get a good few such; how
few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn—or have a
singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me
as yours did, I can tell you in one word—_None_. I am no great kirkgoer,
for many reasons—and the sermon’s one of them, and the first prayer
another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness. I am no
great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I
would like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were to send me a bit
buik, and says I, I’ll wait for the bit buik, and then I’ll mebbe can
read the man’s name, and anyway I’ll can kill twa birds wi’ ae stane.
And, man! the buik was ne’er heard tell o’!
That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.
And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting
to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labours,
and a blessing on your life.