4th May. We believe that Editors are popularly supposed to be peripatetic encyclopzedias, and however mistaken this hypothesis may be, the letter-box of any newspaper office supplies ample and daily proof that the idea is a generaliy.held one. But we doubt whether avy Editor ever had a more curious question put to him than one that was recently addressed to the Scotsman, in a letter asking where the writer could obtain "a courting book." The envelope bore a request that its contents should be forwarded to a local bookseller, and the description of the volume required is so quaint and fore, inthe very words of. the festive that we cannot resist quoting
despairing Corydon. "he kind of book that i want is a courting book,-—a book that will tell me how to talk to the lass that i Jove, a book that will tell me the words to say to her, and the words to ask her when I be courting her is the book that i want. No matter how few or how little the words may be." The writer was apparently a man of discrimination, for he had at least mastered the great fact that a lengthy oration was not necessary for the achievement of his desire; and he probably realised that the "old, old story" was more
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.