I have gone in for impressing my boss with an idea of my importance. You see I closed with this gentleman on the clear understanding that the job would possibly be only a temporary one, but if I can only get him to perceive my manifold merits I shall be kept on through the winter, and somebody else will have to bunk, that is supposing anybody has to. Take it altogether I have made a very good beginning; Hartley talks to me more confidentially every day, and this evening told me I had done very well, which does not look as though he were going to be niggardly in the matter of screw, for that is not a settled point yet. I notice that my writing is nearly as variable as my ideas. You might think this had been written by two different people, or by one man in two different years instead of all at one sitting, bar the last few words, which are a Sunday production. It's all done by a turn of the wrist, something like the handle in a New York printing machine. How can I go on? A slavey, one pre-eminently of the boarding house description, is kicking up a row. I don't exactly know what sort of a row, unless--. Yes, by jove, I have it, she's singing. I don't know whether Messrs. Moody and Sankey would be shocked at her for desecration of the Sabbath or praise her for singing one of their tunes. Probably they would split the difference and tell her she was a good girl, with a hint tacked on that a little went a long way. Well, this is a confounded lot of rubbish I've been writing, but I make it a point never to send an unfilled sheet across the Atlantic, and there is absolutely nothing to write about in all these places. You talk of Dawlish being a dead-and-alive hole, but it's a fool to Ottawa in this respect. It may be a go-ahead _country_, but the _towns_ stand perfectly still. The prevailing sounds on Sunday afternoon are an occasional lumbering kind of tramp along the wooden pavements, the squalling of stray children, and the bark of stray dogs. Love to everybody (there's philanthropy for you). Your loving Brother, J. SETON COCKBURN. P.S.--(Monday night). There is nothing more to say except that I always feel as reluctant to close a letter as to begin one. J. S. C. 202, Bank Street, Ottawa, _October 22nd_, '84. My Dear Old Daddy,