Eleanor Crosses. Other people besides yourself have the impudence to
rush into print on matters of which they are sublimely ignorant.

Perhaps I had better inform you that EDWARD I. reigned at the end
of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries
(1272-1307), not in the fifteenth, and a very slight knowledge of
architecture would convince you that the Surbury relics are not
earlier than the fifteenth century.

Trusting you will not commit any further absurdities, though I am not
too sanguine,

I am, Yours faithfully,

FREDERICK PETHERTON.

My views are not for publication. I prefer not to be mixed up in such
a symposium.

It was evident that my neighbour's weapon was beginning to get heated,
so I flicked him with some more light artillery to draw him on, and
loosed off with:--

Dear Old Man,--What a historian you are! You have JOHN RICHARD GREEN
beaten to his knees, FROUDE and GARDINER out of sight, and even the
authoress of the immortal _Little Arthur_ could not have placed EDDY
I. with greater chronological exactitude. In fact there seems to be no
subject on which you cannot write informatively, which makes me sorry
that you will not join in the literary fray in the local paper, as it
deprives the natives of a great treat.