[To TUN EDITOR OP TDB "SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—The entertaining letter quoted
by Sir Godfrey Lagden in your issue of September 21st as an example of "Cape Boy" English is an old friend in a new guise. The last time I saw it it purported to have been written by a Welsh country grocer to the wholesale dealer from whom he got his supplies. The missing article was a case of soap, which in the P.S. was announced to have been found below the counter. Otherwise the letter was word for word, so far as my memory serves me, the same (mutatia mutandia) as that quoted by Sir Godfrey, even to the name of the addressee "Jones." This rather tends to confirm the belief that most of these specimens of Baboo and other English are apocryphal.—I am, Sir, &c., ARCH. D. FERGUSON.
Lynnden, Kitmaeolm, Renfrewshire.
[We have received communications to the same purport from other correspondents, one of whom has had a copy of the letter in his posshssion for more than twenty years, but cautiously observes: "I cannot vouch for the authenticity of it ; perhaps neither is original; it is always difficult to trace the origin of a myth."—En. Spectator.]
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