2110-2-7-5

Dr. Barnardo's Homes: National Incorporated Association 18 to 26 STEPNEY CAUSEWAY, LONDON, E.

Mr. F.M.SCOONE, Editorial Secretary.

6 MAY 1912

My dear Sir,

We who Read seldom or never pay our debts to You who Write. Yet it's a big debt we owe you! Let me at least acknowledge my debt to you!

I have been living two days with your delightful Tales & Fancies ("The Moon Endureth"), & I cannot resist saying "Thank you" - simply from pure gratitude. You have the Celtic gift & glamour. You can put a soul into a wisp of mist. I can feel the soul & I love the wisp: And alas I can't encage the soul as you can. But I know because I can appreciate that I am a potential John Buchan - who will never write!

So long may your fairy fountain (pen) play & work to delight & teach us the art of living & of seeing.

You make another appeal to me

however. Are you a South Country Scot? Ken ye the Liddel? That's my matter gate & I love its long upland peat haggs & the bonnie brattling shallows and ugsome pools of its lower reaches. You talk of Hermitage & Kershope. Badly it wants a laureate or a Romancer! It has none apart from stodgy Dr Armstrong, and a few far off touches from the magic fingers of Sir Walter (in Guy Mannering chiefly).

It sings a prosaic Rime of True Thomas, does the Liddel, - for it sends all its sons into towns & cities, whether to wear corduroys or soul throttling blacks. "To give space for wandering was it that the world was made so wide." But in most cases the Liddel's Rime loses its witchery within the limits of this Island. I run across the dalesmen of the Borders in this Brick Wen who are tied by the leg or by wife & weans. But they are not as bad as some, - for they know they are tied - & the worst of prisoners is he who does not know he is in prison.

So God bless you for your waft of the wider air & your touch of the sage's magic! Your obliged & grateful thrall

F.M. Scoone

John Buchan, Esq.