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BALLURE, TAYINLOAN, ARGYLLSHIRE.
Aug. 30. 1924.
My dear Buchan,
I have been reading "The Three Hostages". On page 63 I read Sandy Arbuthnot's absurd speech to the 'men of Kilclavers' and the words "will you have celibacy practised in the public street?". These happen to be the very words used of me by a correspondent in the local press when I went to Parliament - " he is not ashamed to practise celibacy openly in the public streets."
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I found that the fellow meant that I wore a cassock passing across the street from the Vicarage to the Church.
Did you borrow the source of these words? You must have heard them from me, or from someone else who had heard them from me, and had they stuck somehow in your memory? Anyhow, you have robbed me of one of my best ecclesiastical stories, for if I repeat it now, everybody - for of course everybody who loves a good story will read the Three Hostages - will quickly put me down as a plagiarist
from you! But I am willing to forgive the admirable Sandy anything.
The vile weather here has brought one consolation - it has given me the chance of reading the story consecutively: and I congratulate myself, and you.
Yours [?]
Cosmo Ebor:
[ST: Archbishop of York]
