how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture

for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room

when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest

Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar

no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention

from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century,

and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.

As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like this tale.

But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to

find his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases

me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now

perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for

me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone

adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same

streets--who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative,

where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and

inglorious Macbean--or may pass the corner of the close where that great

society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in

the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there

by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that

have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. How,

in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory!

Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend,

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