Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

SEWARD

On my knees! Look at them.

NORTH

My dear, dearer, dearest Mr Seward – you are bleeding – I fear a fracture. Let me —

SEWARD

I am not bleeding – only a knap on the knee-pan, sir.

BULLER

Not bleeding! Why you must be drenched in blood, your face is so white.

NORTH

A non sequitur, Buller. But from a knap on the knee-pan I have known a man a lamiter for life.

SEWARD

I lament the loss of my Sketch-Book.

BULLER

It is a judgment on you for that Caricature.

NORTH

What caricature?

BULLER

Since you will force me to tell it, a caricature of – Yourself, sir. I saw him working away at it with a most wicked leer on his face, while you supposed he was taking notes. He held it up to me for a moment – clapped the boards together with the grin of a fiend – and then off to Cladick-Cloock – where he met with Nemesis.

NORTH

Is that a true bill, Mr Seward?

SEWARD

On my honour as a gentleman, and my skill as an artist, it is not. It is a most malignant misrepresentation —

BULLER

It was indeed.

SEWARD

It was no caricature. I promised to Mrs Seward to send her a sketch of the illustrious Mr North; and finding you in one of the happiest of your many-sided attitudes —

NORTH

The act is to be judged by the intention. You are acquitted of the charge.

BULLER

To make a caricature of You, sir, under any circumstances, and for any purpose, would be sufficiently shocking; but HERE AND NOW, and that he might send it to his Wife – so transcends all previous perpetration of crimen læsæ majestatis, that I am beginning to be incredulous of what these eyes beheld – nay, to disbelieve what, if told to any human being, however depraved, would seem to him impossible, even in the mystery of iniquity, and an insane libel on our fallen nature.

SEWARD

I did my best. Nor am I, sir, without hope that my Sketch-Book may be recovered, and then you will judge for yourself, sir, if it be a caricature. A failure, sir, it assuredly was, for what artist has succeeded with YOU?

NORTH

To the Inn, and put on dry clothes.

SEWARD

No. What care I about dry or wet clothes! Here let me lie down and bask in this patch of intenser sunshine at your feet. Don't stir, sir; the Crutch is not the least in the way.

NORTH

We must be all up and doing – the Hour and the Men. The Cavalcade. Hush! Hark! the Bagpipe! The Cavalcade can't be more than a mile off.

SEWARD

Why staring thus like a Goshawk, sir?

BULLER

I hear nothing. Seward, do you?

SEWARD

Nothing. And what can he mean by Cavalcade? Yet I believe he has the Second Sight. I have heard it is in the Family.

NORTH

Hear nothing? Then both of you must be deaf. But I forget – we Mountaineers are Fine-Ears – your sense of hearing has been educated on the Flat. Not now? "The Campbells are coming," – that's the march – that's the go – that's the gathering.

BULLER

A Horn – a Drum, sure enough – and – and – that incomprehensible mixture of groans and yells must be the Bagpipe.

NORTH

See yonder they come, over the hill-top – the ninth mile-stone from Inverary! There's the Van, by the Road-Surveyor lent me for the occasion, drawn by Four Horses. And there's the Waggon, once the property of the lessee of the Swiss Giantess, a noble Unicorn. And there the Six Tent-Carts, Two-steeded; and there the Two Boat-Carriages – horsed I know not how. But don't ye see the bonny Barges aloft in the air? And Men on horseback – count them – there should be Four. You hear the Bagpipe now – surely – "The Campbells are coming." And here is the whole Concern, gentlemen, close at hand, deploying across the Bridge.