Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 2 November 1887.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, pp. 7–8).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: Unrecorded and unreprinted.

* Our correspondent's name is written “Anjuolin Ihadam.” But he seems to be an Englishman, and may possibly be styled Augustus Maclean by those who know him.

Sir, – The following is the kind of thing that greets me at the end of most of the letters which I daily receive:– “I have the honour to be,” &c. &c. followed by a design in ink which might be meant to represent three snakes’ tails and a set of triangles. “Very sincerely yours” – a felled fir-tree with a shower of chips about the stump. “Yours sincerely” – a Greek Theta, and a thing like a dead cat.

And that is one portion of my morning's dak. The snakes’ tails and triangles represent Lee-Scuppersley, who will live and die an official prig, under the delusion that he is over-worked. He is a small man, of no earthly consideration in the eyes of his Government or his friends; but were he a Lieutenant-Governor, his signature could not be more illegible. I scorn Lee-Scuppersley. I have a genial contempt for him. I would bonnet him if he were made Viceroy to-morrow. By what right does Lee-Scuppersley then vex me with hieroglyphs? Because he is a beast.

The felled fir-tree with the chips, is new to me. It may be McCormac's name; but when he last wrote to me, his device was a house on fire with rolling clouds behind. McCormac is a firebrand in the Commission, and the totem is not inappropriate, though puzzling to strangers. Withershin again used to draw a big black fuzzy caterpillar on a boundless prairie – he was a slow worker, was Withershin. Perhaps he has sent the fir-tree to show that he has come to grief at last. But the style of the letter is not Withershin's. I can read every single word except the signature. The writer wants to know when I am “going to look him up.” Now I promised on my journey to see Blougram; but Blougram never uses R.A. note-paper. Besides I can sometimes decipher his signature – the post and rail, not the shovel and dustpan one.