it to be
cooked and eaten _instanter_.

As soon as I have recovered a missing link of my fishing-rod (which it
seems has been overlooked by Mister Pawnbroker), and when I have
procured some suitable bait, &c., it is my intention to catch a fine
salmon out of the burn for my enchanting divinity, and, as I place the
fish in her lily-like hands, to strike iron while it is hot and make her
the formal proposal of matrimony.

Mister CRUM, hearing of my piscatorial ambitions, has, with almost
incredible simplicity, offered to lend me his salmon rod, with a volume
of flies, little suspecting that he will be assisting me to catch two
fish upon one hook! I am immensely tickled by such a tip-top joke, and
can scarcely refrain from imparting it to Miss WEE-WEE herself, though I
shall wait until I have first secured the salmon.

I had some valuable remarks upon Scottish idioms and linguistic
peculiarities, &c., but these, of course, are to be suppressed _sine
die_--unless I am to be permitted to overflow into a special
supplement.

XXVI

_Mr Jabberjee expresses some audaciously sceptical opinions. How he
secured his first Salmon, with the manner in which he presented it
to his divinity._

Owing mainly to lack of opportunity, invitations, _et caetera_, I have
not resumed the offensive against members of the grouse department, but
have rather occupied myself in laborious study of Caledonian dialects,
as exemplified in sundry local works of poetical and prose fiction,
until I should be competent to converse with the _aborigines_ in their
own tongue.

[Illustration: "WHETHER HE HAD WHA-HAED WI' HON'BLE WALLACE?"]

Then (having now the diction of Poet BURNS in my fingers' ends) I did
genially accost the first native I met in the street of Kilpaitrick,
complimenting him upon his honest, sonsie face, and enquiring whether he
had wha-haed wi' Hon'ble WALLACE, and was to bruise the Peckomaut, or
ca' the knowes to the yowes. But, from the intemperance of his reply, I
divined that he was totally without comprehension of my meaning!

Next I addressed him by turns in the phraseologies of Misters BLACK,
BARRIE, and CROCKETT, Esquires, interlarding my speech with
"whatefers," and "hechs," and "ou-ays," and "dod-mons," and "loshes,"
and "tods," _ad libitum_, to which after listening with the most earnest
attention, he returned the answer that he was not acquainted with any
Oriental language.

Nor could I by any argume