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to go at Basle.

"An other proposition is this. My friends are at in the canton of That bath after their description is very fine and the country around also very nice. There you find my friends who as I think will remain there still two weeks. You make the knowledge of Mr. Doctor & other Persons you may take baths of cold water which would bee very good fore you for it is said to have been made there since spring very good eurs. I know not if there are mountains for making great promenades, may I write to day to my friend and will demand him if my counceil I give you is acceptable, than I write you without hesistation.

The (society) company in at bath is to bee very little and there fore familiar. I think that an sojourn as this would bee more agreable because you have knowledges also. And during this bad time you have ever a

refuge before rain.

"I am very curious if you agreed with my plan, however you must not delay if you will meet my friends. "Receive my cordial salutations. "Your true friend,

-."

My reason for quoting this letter is, to show you that probably when the average Englishman attempts a letter in French or German, this may be not an unfair representation of his performance.

Really ambiguous sentences are to be found even in our most careful writers. One would think that Miss Austen, if any one, would not be caught tripping in this matter. But I read in "Pride and Prejudice," ch. xxviii., pt. i: "Mr. Collins and Charlotte appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at the small gate, which led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of the whole party." And again, ch. xiii. pt. ii: "Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her, and she felt how little could be gained by an attempt to pursue them." I also find in the same novel, ch. xx. pt. ii. : "Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves." In this case the correction is easy, as the two persons were Jane and Elizabeth: "Each felt for the other and of course for herself:" but had the genders been different, it would have been impossible to write the sentence in this form at all.

I find the following sentence in Thackeray's "Virginians," Part IV. :

“He dropped his knife in his retreat against the wall, which his rapid antagonist kicked under the table."

A letter in the Pall Mall Gazette about a fortnight ago (Oct. 23, 1866), begins, "Sir, I have been spending this autumn in the vicarage of a pleasant village in Blankshire, famous for its cricket, which I have rented during the parson's holiday." In a review in the same paper of Aug. 24, 1866, we read as follows:

"We defy any sensible bachelor anxious to change his condition, to read Lady Harriett Sin clair's book without drawing a painful contrast in

his mind between a future passed with that gifted lady, and with (the writer means, and one passed with) the fast, very fast, young women with whom he rides in the morning, plays croquet and drinks tea in the afternoon, sits by at dinner, and dances with at night, but wisely abstains from marrying." One of the commonest of newspaper errors is to use a participial clause instead of a verbal one, leaving the said clause pendent, so that in the reader's mind it necessarily falls into a wrong relation. Thus we had in the Times the other day, in the description of the York congress, assembled under the presidency of the Archbishop: "His Grace said, &c., and after pronouncing the benediction, the assembly separated." And again, in the account of the Queen's visit to open the Aberdeen waterworks, "In 1862, the Police Commissioners, headed by the Provost, set themselves in earnest to the work of obtaining a new Police and Water act, and, succeeding in their labours, the splendid undertaking opened to-day is the result."

The notable and often exposed vulgarism "and which," or "and who," when no "which" or "who" has before occurred, seems as frequent as ever. This is an answer to an address presented to the Princess of Wales, and is the composition of an English nobleman :

"H. R. H. the Princess of Wales acknowledges, &c., and for which she is profoundly recognisant." I quote the following from a novel which shall be nameless: "His having been with Lorenzo at the time of his death, and who had wished to confess to him, raised him prodigiously in the opinion of all those who had been the admirers of that prince." I have received a notice this very day from a London bookseller to this effect:

"A. B. C. begs to announce the above important contributions by Dr. T. to Biblical Criticism as nearly ready, and which he will have for sale as soon as published."

A

Mistakes in the arrangement of words and clauses are found in high quarters not less frequently than of old. In the Times of Saturday last, a paragraph is headed "The Late Queen's Huntsman," when "The Queen's Late Huntsman" is intended. correspondent sends the following from a letter describing the great hurricane at Calcutta in 1864 : "The great storm wave which passed up the lower Hooghly is said to have been of the height of a man at a distance of ten miles from the bed of the river."

The ignorant use of one word for another continues to give rise to curious mistakes. A letter to a newspaper says, "There is in the parish of Helmingham, Suffolk, an ancient graveyard of human skeletons, bearing much resemblance to, if not identical with, that mentioned in your impression on Thursday last as being recently discovered on the farm of Mr. Attrim at Stratford-on-Avon."

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In this sentence let me notice that "as being discovered" is also wrong. The writer meant, having been discovered."

The secretary of a railway publishes in the Times

of Oct. 17, this year, the following notice. I suppose
he is an Irishman. "The present service of trains
between Three Bridges and East Grinstead, and the
coach now running between Uckfield and Tunbridge|tion of the rich from the ills of humanity!
Wells, is now discontinued."

defendant, "He, though a gentleman of property,
was unhappily paralysed in his lower limbs." What
a delightful idea this writer had of the usual exemp.

In the leading article of the Times, the same day, appeared this sentence: "To our mind it was impossible to entertain any doubt on the subject, at least not since the intimation conveyed by the American minister." You will observe that there is here a "not" too much. The writer meant, "at least since the intimation, &c."

A correspondent sends me a very rich example of this confusion of ideas. It occurs in a leading article of the Standard: "The progress of science can neither be arrested nor controlled. Still less, perhaps, in this hurrying nineteenth century, can we expect to persuade men that, after all, the most haste may finally prove the worst speed, and that as a rule it must be of less importance to arrive at your journey's end quickly than it is not to arrive at all." Of course the writer meant, "than it is to make sure of arriving at all."

I have one or two more illustrations of the blunder of using one word when another is meant. In a well-known novel by one of our most popular writers, we read: "He had not learned the heart (sic) of assuming himself to be of importance wherever he might find himself."

This can hardly be a misprint.

In another novel of the day, we read: "For these pious purposes, a visible and attractive presentiment of the newly promoted Saint is indispensable."

The author meant "presentment": "presentiment" being a foreboding within the mind, not a demonstration before the eyes.

In the Times of April 20, of this year, we read: "The prisoners are allowed. . to receive food from their friends outside, an indulgence which has been in many instances abused by the secretion of tobacco and written communications in the food sent in."

Had the writer consulted his dictionary, he would have found that secretion means "that agency in the animal economy that consists in separating the various fluids of the body." He meant "secreting." If our last example presented a physical curiosity, our next even surpasses it. The Times Law report of Feb. 13, last year, told us of a plaintiff or

Nor does the level of physical intelligence rise iu our next example,-an advertisement of Keating's Persian Insect-destroying powder. It states that "this powder is quite harmless to animal life, but is unrivalled in destroying fleas, bugs, flies, cockroaches, beetles, gnats, mosquitos, moths in furs, and every other species of insect." We thought we had more frequently found the converse mistake made, and the appellation "animals" applied somewhat exclusively to the unlovely genera here enumerated. The advertisement loses none of its richness as it proceeds: "Being the original importer of this article, which has found so great a sale that it has tempted others to vend a so-called article, the public are therefore cautioned to observe that the packets of the genuine powder bear the autograph of Thomas Keating."

One more specimen, and I have done.

"Notice. An advertisement headed Evans and Co., merchants, Shanghae, appears in the London Daily Telegraph of June 4th, intimating I was about, or had left, China. I beg to state, I never authorised H. Evans, baker and biscuit maker, to state I had, or intended leaving Shanghae.—John Deverill."

Well, my friends, our evening is over, and if it has amused you, and given you any hints leading to the sensible use of your own language, our purpose is answered. No further results are contemplated. We shall never persuade the Times to mend its ways in spelling; on Saturday last it made an English Bishop write of his "diocess," while I observe the adjective diocesan is commonly left in its correct form; and a few weeks since it spoke, in a leading article, of the book of Revelations. Nor shall we be able to persuade the public to call the kings of Egypt Pharaoh and not Pharoah. There are doubtless wise reasons for the constant preference of the latter form.

In this, as in some other matters, "Great is error, and it will prevail." For, as the most facetious of my former censors reminded me, "The progress of language is a thing far mightier than the breath of Deans."

THE STARLING.
BY THE EDITOR.

CHAPTER I.-ADAM MERCER, POACHER AND
SOLDIER.

"THE man was ance a poacher!" So said, or rather breathed, Peter Smellie, grocer and elder, with his hard wheezing breath, into the ears of Robert Menzies, a brother elder, who was possessed of a more humane disposition. They were conversing in great confidence about the important "case" of

Sergeant Adam Mercer. What that case was, the reader will learn by and by. The only reply of Robert Menzies was, "Is't possible!" accompanied by a start and a steady gaze at his well-informed brother. "It's a fac' I tell ye," continued Smellie, "but ye'll keep it to yersel'-keep it to yersel', for it doesna do to injure a brither wi'oot cause; yet it's richt ye should ken what a bad beginning

our freen has had. Pit your thumb on't, however, in the mean time-keep it, as the minister says, in retentis, which I suppose means, till needed." Smellie went on his way to attend to some parochial duty, nodding and smiling, and again admonishing his brother to "keep it to himsel'." He seemed unwilling to part with the copyright of such a spicy bit of gossip. Menzies repeated to himself, "A poacher! wha would have thocht it? YetWe shall not record the harmonies, real or imaginary, which Mr. Menzies so intuitively discovered between the early and latter habits of the Sergeant.

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And yet the gossiping Smellie, whose nose had tracked out the history of many people in the parish of Drumsylie, was in this, as in most cases, accurately informed. The Sergeant of whom he spoke had been a poacher some thirty years before, in a district many miles away. The wonder is how Smellie had found the fact out, or how, if true, it could affect the present character or position of one of the best men in the parish; yet true it was, and it is as well to confess it, not with the view of excusing it, but only to account for Mercer's having become a soldier, and to show how one, "meek as a sheathed sword" in his later years, had in his earlier ones been possessed of a very keen and ardent temperament, whose ruling passion was the love of excitement, in the shape of battle with game and keepers. We accidentally heard the whole story, truly told, and, on account of other circumstances in the Sergeant's later history, it interested us more than we fear it can do our readers. Mercer did not care for money, nor seek to make a trade of the unlawful pleasure of shooting without a licence. Nor in the district in which he lived was the offence then looked upon in a light so very disreputable as it is now; neither was it pursued by the same disreputable class. The sport itself was what Mercer loved for its own sake, and it had become to him quite a passion. For two or three years he had frequently transgressed, but he was at last caught on the early dawn of a summer's morning by the well-known John Spence, who for many years protected the game on the lands of Lord. John had many assistant keepers, from whom he received reports every Dow and again of some unknown and mysterious poacher who had hitherto eluded every attempt to seize him. Though rather old for active service, Spence resolved to concentrate all his experience for, like many a thoroughbred keeper, he had him f been a poacher in his youth-on the securing Adam Mercer; but how he did so it would take pages to tell. Adam never suspected John of troubling himself about such details as watching poachers, and John never suspected that Adam was the poacher; for the keeper was cousin-german to Mercer's mother, and he therefore felt his own credit and honour involved in the capture. The capture itself was not difficult; for John having lain in wait suddenly confronted Adam, who, scorning the idea of flying, much more of struggling with

his old cousin, quietly accosted him with, "Weel, John, ye hae catched me at last."

"Adam Mercer!" exclaimed the keeper, with a look of horror. "It canna be you! It's no' possible!"

"It's just me, John, and no mistak'," said Adam, quietly throwing himself down on the heather and twisting a bit about his finger. "For better or waur, I'm in yer power; but had I been a ne'er-doweel, like Willy Steel, or Tam McGrath, I'd have blackened my face and whammel'd ye ower and pit your head in a well-ee afore ye could cheep as loud as a stane-chucker; but when I saw wha ye war, I gied in."

"I wad raither than a five-pun-note I had never seen yer face! Keep us! what's to be dune! What wull yer mither say? and his Lordship? Na, what wull onybody say wi' a spark o' decency when they hear

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"Dinna fash yer thoomb, John; tak' me and send me to the jail."

"The jail! What gude will that do to you or me, laddie? I'm clean donnered about the business. Let me sit down aside ye; keep laigh, in case the keepers see ye, and tell me by what misshanter ye ever took to this wicked business, and under my nose, as if I couldna fin' ye oot!" "Sport, sport!" was Mercer's reply.

"Ye ken,

John, I'm a shoemaker, and it's a dull trade, and squeezing the clams against the wame is ill, they tell me, for digestion; and when that fails, ane's speerits fail, and the warld gets black and dull; and when things wad be thus gaun wrang wi' me, I couldna flee to drink: but I thocht o' the moors that I kent sae weel when my faither was a keeper to Murray o' Cultrain. Ye mind my faither? was he no a han' at a gun!"

"He was that the verra best," said John.

"Aweel," continued Adam, "I used, when doon in the mouth and dowie, to ponder ower the braw days o' health and life I had when carrying his bag, and getting a shot noos and thans as a reward; and it's a truth I tell ye, that the whirr kickic-ic o' a covey o' muirfowl aye pits my bluid in a tingle. It's a sort o' madness that I canna accoont for; but I think I'm no responsible for't. Paitricks are maist as bad, though turnips and stubble are no to be compared wi' the heather, nor walkin' amang them like the far-aff braes, the win'y taps o' the hills, or the lown glens. Mony a time I hae promised to drap the gun and stick to the last, but when I'm no' weel and wauken and see the gun glintin', and think o' the wide bleak muirs, and the fresh caller air o' the hill, wi' the scent o' the braes, and hear thae whirrin' cratures-man, I canna help it! I spring up and grasp the gun, and I'm aff!"

The reformed poacher and keeper listened with a poorly-concealed smile, and said, "Nae doot, nae doot, Adam; it's a' natural-I'm no' denying that; it's a glorious business; in fac', it's jist pairt o' every man that has a steady han' and a guid e'e and

a feelin' heart. Ay, ay. But, Adam, were ye no through the whole Peninsular campaign, with what frichtened?"

"For what?"

"For the keepers!"

"The keepers! Eh, John, that's half the sport! The thocht o' dodgin' keepers, jinkin' them roon hills, and doon glens, and lyin' amang the muir-hags, and nickin' a brace or twa, and then fleein' like mad doon ae brae and up anither; and keekin' here and creepin' there, and cowerin' alang a fail dyke, and scuddin' thro' the woodthat's mair than half the life o't, John! I'm no sure if I could shoot the birds if they were a' in my ain kail-yaird, and my ain property, and if I paid for them!"

"I' faith," said John, taking a snuff and handing the box to Adam, "it's human natur'! But, ye ken, human natur's wicked, desperately wicked! and afore I was a keeper my natur' was fully as wicked as yours,-fully, Adam, if no waur. But I hae repented ever since I was made keeper; and I wadna like to hinder your repentance. Na, na. We mauna be ower prood! Sae I'llWait a bit, man, be canny till I see if ony o' the lads are in sicht;" and John peeped over a knoll, and cautiously looked around in every direction until satisfied that he was alone. "I'll no mention this job," he continued, "if ye'll promise me, Adam, never to try this wark again; for it's no respect able; and, warst o' a', it's no safe, and ye wad get me into a habble as weel as yersel; sae promise me, like a guid cousin, as I may say, and then just creep doon the burn, and along the plantin', and ower the wa', till ye get intil the peat road, and be aff; but I canna wi' conscience let ye tak the birds wi' ye.

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Adam thought a little, and said, "Ye're a gude sowl, John, and I'll no' betray ye." After a while he added, gravely, "But I maun kill something. It's no in my heart, as wickedness; but my fingers maun draw a trigger." After a pause, he continued, "Gie's yer hand, John; ye hae been a frien' to me, and I'll be a man o' honour to you. I'll never poach mair, but I'll 'list and be a sodger!"

"A sodger!" exclaimed John.

But Adam, after seizing John by the hand and saying, "Good-bye!" suddenly started off down the glen, leaving two brace of grouse, with his gun, at John's feet; as much as to say, Tell my lord how you caught the wicked poacher, and how he fled the country.

John told how he had caught a poacher, but never gave his name, nor ever hinted that Adam was the man.

It was thus Adam Mercer poached and enlisted.

'One evening I was at the house of a magistrate with whom I was acquainted, when a man named Andrew Dick called to get my friend's signature to his pension paper. I am fond of old soldiers, and never fail when an opportunity offers to have a talk with them about "the wars." Dick had been

credit I cannot tell. But on the evening in question, my friend Findlay, the magistrate, happened to say in a bluff kindly way, "Don't spend your pension in drink."

Dick replied, saluting him, "It's very hard, sir, that after fighting the battles of our country, we should be looked upon as 'worthless,' by gentlemen like you.”

"No, no, Dick, I never said you were worthless," was the reply.

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Please, yer honour," said Dick, "ye did not say it, but I consider any man who spends his money in drink is worthless, and, what is mair, a fool-that's to say, he has no recovery in him, no supports to fall back on, but is in full retreat, as we would say, from decency.

"But you know," said my friend, looking kindly on Dick, "the bravest soldiers, and none were braver than those who served in the Peninsula, often exceeded fearfully-shamefully, and were a disgrace to humanity."

"Well," replied Dick, "it's no easy to make evil good; but yet ye forget our difficulties and temptations. Consider only, sir, that there we were, not in bed for months and months; marching at all hours; ill-fed, ill-clothed, and uncertain of lifewhich I assure your honour makes men indifferent to it; and we had often to get our mess as we best could, sometimes a tough steak out of a dead horse or dead mule, for when the beast was skinned and dead it was difficult to make out its kind; and after toiling and moiling, up and down, here and there and everywhere, summer and winter, when at last we took a town with blood and wounds, and when a cask of wine or spirits fell in our way, I don't believe that you, sir, or the justices of the peace, or, with reverence be it spoken, the ministers themselves, would have said 'No,' to a drop, and perhaps to more than was good for them. You'll excuse me, sir; I'm free with you."

"I didn't mean to lecture you, or to blame you, Dick, for I know the army is not the place for Christians."

"Begging your honour's pardon, sir," said Dick, "the best Christians I ever knowed were in the army, men who would do their dooty to their king, their country, and their God."

"You have known such?" I asked, breaking into the conversation to turn it aside from what threatened to be a dispute.

"I have, sir! There's one Adam Mercer, in your own town, an elder of your Church-excuse me, sir, I'm a dissenter on principle-for I consider

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"Go on, Dick, about Mercer; never mind your church principles."

"Well, sir, as I was saying-though, mind you, I'm not ashamed of being a dissenter-Adam was our sergeant; and a worthier man never shouldered a bayonet. He was no great speaker, and was quiet as his gun when piled; but when he shot-he shot! short and pithy, a crack, and right into the

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argument. He was well respeckit, for he was just and mercifu'-never bothered the men, and never picked oot fauts, but covered them; never preached, but could gie an advice in two or three words that gripped firm aboot the heart and took the breath frae ye. He was extraordinar' brave! If there was any work to do by ordinar', up to leading a forlorn hope, Adam was sure to be on't; and them that kent him, even better than me, said that he never got courage frae brandy-altho' that has its sin gude in my opinion-but, as they assured me, though ye'll maybe no believe it, his preparation was a prayer! I canna tell how they found this oot, for Adam was unco quiet; but they say a drummer catched him on his knees afore he mounted the ladder wi' Cansh at the siege of Badajoz, and that Adam telt him no to say a word aboot it, but yet to tak his advice and seek God's help mair than man's."

This narrative interested me much, so that I remembered its facts, and connected them with what I afterwards heard about Adam Mercer many years ago, when on a visit to Drumsylie.

CHAPTER IL-THE ELDER AND HIS STARLING.

WHEN Adam Mercer returned from the wars, nearly half a century ago, he settled in the village of Drumsylie, situated in a remote district in the northern parts of Scotland, and about twenty miles from the scene of his poaching habits, of which he had long ago repented. His hot young blood had been cooled down by hard service, and his vehement temperament subdued by military discipline; but there remained an admirable mixture in him of deepest feeling, regulated by habitual self-restraint, and expressed in a manner outwardly calm but not cold, undemonstrative but not unkind. His whole bearing was that of a man accustomed at once to command and to obey. Corporal Dick had not formed a wrong estimate of his Christianity. The lessons taught by his mother, whom he fondly loved, and whom he had in her widowhood supported to the utmost of his means from pay and prize-money, and her example of a simple, cheerful, and true life, had sunk deeper than he knew into his heart, and, taking root, had sprung up amidst the stormy scenes of war, bringing forth the fruits of stern self-denial and moral courage tempered by strong social affections.

His

Adam had resumed his old trade of shoemaker, cupying a small cottage, which, with the aid of a poor old woman in the neighbourhood, who for an bour morning and evening did the work of a servant, he kept with singular neatness. Ettle parlour was ornamented with several memorials of the war-a sword or two picked up on memorable battle-fields; a French cuirass from Waterloo, with a gaudy print of Wellington, and one also of the meeting with Blucher at La Belle

Alliance.

The Sergeant attended the parish church as reguLarly as he used to do parade. Any one could have set his watch by the regularity of his movements

on Sunday mornings. At the same minute on each succeeding day of holy rest and worship, the tall, erect figure, with well-braced shoulders, might be seen stepping out of the cottage door-where he stood erect for a moment to survey the weatherdressed in the same suit of black trousers, brown surtout, buff waistcoat, black stock, white cotton gloves, with a yellow cane under his armeverything so neat and clean, from the polished boots to the polished hat, from the well-brushed grey whiskers to the well-arranged locks that met in a peak over his high forehead and soldierlike face. Never was there a more sedate or attentive listener.

There were few week days, and no Sunday evenings, on which the Sergeant did not pay a visit to some neighbour confined to bed from sickness, or suffering from distress of some kind. He manifested rare tact-made up of common sense and genuine benevolence-on such occasions. His strong sympathies put him instantly en rapport with those whom he visited, enabling him at once to meet them on some common ground. Yet in whatever way the Sergeant began his intercourse, whether by listening patiently-and what a comfort such listening silence is!-to the history of the sickness or the sorrow which had induced him to enter the house, or by telling some of his own adventures, or by reading aloud the newspaper-he in the end managed with perfect naturalness to convey truths of weightiest import, and fraught with enduring good and comfort-all backed up by a humanity, an unselfishness, and a gentlemanlike respect for others, which made him a most welcome guest. The humble were made glad, and the proud were subdued-they knew not how, nor probably did the Sergeant himself, for he but felt aright and acted as he felt, rather than endeavoured to devise a plan as to how he should speak or act in order He numbered to produce some definite result. many true friends; but it was not possible for him to avoid being secretly disliked by those with whom, from their character, he would not associate, or whom he tacitly rebuked by his orderly life and good manners.

Two events, in no way connected, but both of some consequence to the Sergeant, turned the current of his life after he had resided a few years in Drumsylie. One was, that by the unanimous choice of the congregation, to whom the power was committed by the minister and his Kirk Session, Mercer was elected to the office of elder in the parish. This was a most unexpected compli

Every congregation in the Church of Scotland is governed by a court, recognised by civil law, composed of the minister, who acts as "Moderator," and has only a casting vote, and elders ordained to the office, which is for life. This court determines, subject to appeal to higher courts, who are to receive the Sacrament, and all cases of church discipline. No lawyer is allowed to plead in it. Its freedom from civil consequences is secured by law. In many cases it also takes charge of the poor. The eldership has been an unspeakable blessing to Scotland.

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