CORRESPONDENCE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2084, 8 March 1898, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

Under no circumstances whatever is the Editor r, sponsih'e fur mutter contained in ]

(To. the Elitor.) Sir, — Having been told that there was a letter in iko News from. Mac, of Gordon, and having aforetime heard him roil off tue verses of Bobby Burns most eloquently, besides reciting his own wonderful poetical effusions, I looked for something really characteristic and original, but as I read the first few lines I said ‘ ’its no himsel’ at a’.’ He went on to recount how ho had been threatened and terrified on the road to Te Aroha by some wicked enemy, and I saw that the consequences of this fright were very serious, for he had altogether lost his senses, but pursuing his way, on entering the town, he had the good fortune to find another man, which turned out to be those of a brighter Soot named Malcolm, and thus when writing his letter it was Malcolm that was writing and not Mac, there were the oft used words, the Robertsonian phrases, all the peculiar tricks of speech, including the latin, which had aforetime appeared over the signature of ‘Senex,’ which nom de plume the demon printer on one occasion turned into ‘sense,’ making the worthy exschoolmaster seem much more vain than he really is. Well, sir, if there was. one thing I thought Jock could do, all by his own self, it was cursing his enemies, having heard him curse considerable, many a time and oft, though never in latin, but now this singular fright compelled him to use the wits of another man. In the course of. his letter he denounced the genial Dominie of the Gordon, perhaps he had ruminated on the proverb, set a thief to catoh a thief, and so thought it necessary to employ a former schoolmaster to haste a present one, because he had kindly consented to place his pen at the service of a committee, at the moment without a secretary. But now a dreadful idea dawns upon me, if Mac is no longer Mao, has Malcolm ! become possessed of the wild wits of the man who has stolen his brains, if so its a hard ending to the hermit’s, lonely life, hut it is to he hoped the spirits will soon return to their accustomed bodies, as the real Mac would be much missed in the Gordon.—l am, etc..

Johannes AcornsETTEr.