’Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus;
  Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus.’

A few further explanatory remarks will not be impertinent.

I shall barely lay down a few general rules for the reader’s guidance.

1.  The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the r when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel.

2.  He seldom sounds the final g, a piece of self-denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals.  The same of the final d, as han’ and stan’ for hand and stand.

3.  The h in such words as while, when, where, he omits altogether.

4.  In regard to a, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, as hev for have, hendy for handy, ez for as, thet for that, and again giving it the broad sound it has in father, as hansome for handsome.

5.  To the sound ou he prefixes an e (hard to exemplify otherwise than orally).

The following passage in Shakespeare he would recite thus:—­

’Neow is the winta uv eour discontent
Med glorious summa by this sun o’Yock,
An’ all the cleouds thet leowered upun eour heouse
In the deep buzzum o’ the oshin buried;
Neow air eour breows beound ’ith victorious wreaths;
Eour breused arms hung up fer monimunce;
Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins,
Eour dreffle marches to delighfle masures. 
Grim-visaged war heth smeuthed his wrinkled front,
An’ neow, instid o’ mountin’ bare-bid steeds
To fright the souls o’ ferfle edverseries,
He capers nimly in a lady’s ch[)a]mber,
To the lascivious pleasin’ uv a loot.’

6. Au, in such words as daughter and slaughter, he pronounces ah.

7.  To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl ad libitum.

[Mr. Wilbur’s notes here become entirely fragmentary.—­C.N.]

[Greek:  a].  Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Biglow, I thought the curious reader might be gratified with a sight of the editorial effigies.  And here a choice between two was offered,—­the one a profile (entirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait painted by a native artist of much promise.  The first of these seemed wanting in expression, and in the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs has been heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of force on the part of the artist) into too close an approach to actual strabismus.  This slight divergence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary model—­however I may have been taught to regard it in the light of a mercy rather than a cross, since it enabled me to give as much of directness and personal application to my discourses as met the wants of my congregation, without risk of offending any by being supposed to have him or her in my eye (as the saying is)—­seemed yet to Mrs. Wilbur a sufficient objection to the engraving of the aforesaid painting.  We read of many who either absolutely refused to allow the copying of their features, as especially did Plotinus and Agesilaus among the ancients, not to mention the more modern instances of Scioppius, Palaeottus, Pinellus, Velserus, Gataker, and others, or were indifferent thereto, as Cromwell.