" Here is a scrap of paper holding these few words,
written in 1852.
"Nine o'clock, P.M. Tremont.
"Arrangements have just been concluded for a meeting _somewhere_
to-night, which we much desire you should attend. Are you equal to
two nights running of good time?"
Then follows a pen portrait of a friend of his with a cloven foot and a
devil's tail just visible under his cloak Sometimes, to puzzle his
correspondent, he would write in so small a hand that the note could not
be read without the aid of a magnifying-glass. Calligraphy was to him
one of the fine arts, and he once told Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, that
if all trades failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's
Prayer and the Creed (not the Athanasian) in the size of that coin. He
greatly delighted in rhyming and lisping notes and billets. Here is one
of them, dated from Baltimore without signature:--
"Dear F----th! The thanguinary fateth (I don't know what their anger
meanth) brought me your letter of the eighth, yethterday, only the
fifteenth! What blunder cauthed by chill delay (thee Doctor
Johnthon'th noble verthe) Thuth kept my longing thoul away, from all
that motht I love on earth? Thankth for the happy contenth!--thothe
Dithpatched to J.
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