“My DEAR MARY—­Yours was received with much pleasure, as it is always a satisfaction to your friends here to know that you are well and doing well. We all take the most sincere interest in your health, and also in your improvements in other respects. But I am sorry to say they do not quite keep pace with our expectations.  I must therefore take this opportunity of mentioning to you a fault of yours, which, though a very great one in itself, is one that a very slight degree of attention on your part, will, I have no doubt, enable you to get entirely the better of. is fortunate for you, my dear Mary, that you have friends who are always ready to point out your errors to you.  For want of that most invaluable blessing, viz. a sincere friend, many a one has gone out of the world, no wiser in many respects, than when they came into it.  But that, I flatter myself, will not be your case, as you cannot but be sensible of the great pains my sister and I have taken to point out your faults to you from the hour of your birth.  The one to which I particularly allude at present is, the constant omission of proper dates to your letters, by which means we are all of us very often brought into most unpleasant situations. As an instance of it, our worthy minister, Mr M’Drone, happened to be calling here the very day we received your last letter. After hearing it read, he most naturally inquired the date of it; and I cannot tell you how awkward we all felt when we were obliged to confess it had none! And since I am upon that subject, I think it much better to tell you candidly that I do not think your hand of write by any means improved.  It does not look as if you bestowed that pains upon it which you undoubtedly ought to do; for without pains, I can assure you, Mary, you will never do any thing well.  As our admirable grandmother, good Lady Girnachgowl, used to say, pains makes gains; and so it was seen upon her; for it was entirely owing to her pains that the Girnachgowl estate was relieved, and came to be what it is now, viz. a most valuable and highly productive property.