CLX.

TO MR. SAMUEL BROWN.

[Samuel Brown was brother to the poet's mother: he seems to have been a joyous sort of person, who loved a joke, and understood double meanings.]

_Mossgiel, 4th May, 1789._

DEAR UNCLE,

This, I hope, will find you and your conjugal yoke-fellow in your good old way; I am impatient to know if the Ailsa fowling be commenced for this season yet, as I want three or four stones of feathers, and I hope you will bespeak them for me. It would be a vain attempt for me to enumerate the various transactions I have been engaged in since I saw you last, but this know,--I am engaged in a _smuggling trade_, and God knows if ever any poor man experienced better returns, two for one, but as freight and delivery have turned out so dear, I am thinking of taking out a license and beginning in fair trade. I have taken a farm on the borders of the Nith, and in imitation of the old Patriarchs, get men-servants and maid-servants, and flocks and herds, and beget sons and daughters.

Your obedient nephew,

R. B.

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