Note 5 — MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN HUGH CLAPPERTON, THE AFRICAN TRAVELLER.

In a notice of Captain Clapperton’s life, published lately by John M‘Diarmid, Esq. Editor of the Dumfries Courier, it is stated, that while under the tuition of Mr. Downie, he catered successfully for newspapers, both for the benefit of his master and that of himself; and one gentleman he was in the habit of applying to, once said to him, though merely in joke, “What makes you come always to me; do you suppose you have a right to borrow all my papers?” At first the boy was rather abashed; but rallying in a moment, he presently replied, “I am sure I neither dirty nor keep them long, and your maids, I can tell you, hang all your washings to dry on Mr. Downie’s hedge.”—Sketches from Nature, p. 324.