I do not think I shall purchase a gun, for there is a young English acquaintance of mine who is the Devil's Own Volunteer, and who will no doubt have the good nature to lend me his rifle for a week or two. As to costume, my tailor assures me that it is totally unnecessary to assume the national raiment of a Scotch, unless I am prepared to stalk after a stag. But why should I be deterred by any cowardly fear from pursuing so constitutionally timid a quadruped? I have therefore commissioned him to manufacture me a petticoat kilt, with a chequered tartan, and other accessories, for when we are going to Rome, it is the mark of politeness to dress in the Romish style. [Illustration: "WOULD BE GREATLY IMPROVED BY THE SIMPLE ADDITION OF SOME KNEE-CAPS."] The Caledonian costume is indubitably becoming; but would, I venture humbly to think, be greatly improved by the simple addition of some knee-caps. XXIII _Mr Jabberjee delivers his Statement of Defence, and makes his preparations for the North. He allows his patriotic sentiments to get the better of him in a momentary outburst of disloyalty--to which no serious importance need be attached._ My fair plaintiff has not suffered the grass of inaction to grow upon her feet, having already issued her Statement of Claim, by which she alleges that I proposed marriage on a certain date, and did subsequently, on divers occasions, treat her, in the presence of sundry witnesses, as an affianced, after which I mizzled into obscurity, and on various pretexts did decline, and do still decline, to fulfil my nuptial contract, by which conduct the plaintiff, being grievously afflicted in mind, body, and estate, claims damages to the doleful tune of £1000. (N.B.--I have thought it advisable here and there to translate the legal phraseology into more comprehensible verbiage.) Now such a claim is to milk a ram, or _prendre la lune avec les dents_, seeing that I am not a proprietor of even one thousand rupees. Nevertheless (as I have informed Mr SMARTLE), my progenitor, the Mooktear, will bleed to any reasonable extent of costs out of pocket. I have held frequent and lengthy interviews with the said SMARTLE, Esq., who is of incredible despatch and celerity--though I sometimes regret that I did not procure a solicitor of a more senile and sympathetic disposition. Assuredly had I done so, such an one would not, after perusing my Statement of Defence--a most magnificently voluminous document of over fifty folios, crammed and stuffed with satirical hits and sideblows, and pathetic appeals for the Bench's indulgence, and replete with familiar quotations from best classical and continental authors--such an one, I say, would not have split his sides with disrespectful chucklings, thrown my composition into a wasted paper receptacle, and proceeded to knock off a meagre substitute of his own, containing a very few dry bald paragraphs, in the inadequately brief space of under the hour.