The only fear was that
Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared
unpleasantly probable.
Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He
intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to
the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy
Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a
walk to the Lancaster Road.
At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part
of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written
by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography;
but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been
somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble
citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal
personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would
provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the
crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems
a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of
princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati,
should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I
could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew
Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully
numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to
any serious extent might be dangerous.
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