Note 468 — CCCXXV.—To Sir James Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh.[467]

Din, noise. The superfluous "e," at the end of several of these words, may possibly have been a dash in the writing. "Dine," for "din"; "whoe," for "who"; "humblee," for "humble." Compare "honorable," on the address of the letter with the same word in the commencement. (A kind friend, reading this letter carefully over, maintains that "dine," or "din," is not the word in the autograph, but that it is "drane," which would mean that he did not wish to be a drain on the time of the Assembly, who had greater business to attend to than this personal affair of his. But, so far as we are aware, that phrase, "to be a drain," never occurs elsewhere in Rutherford's writings. What if the writer, in the agitation of the moment, allowed his pen to write "drane," though he meant it to be "dine"?)