What a difference a day... Nr. 17

Mondays, sometimes the tabula isn't rasa enough. We take the occasion of a Monday holiday to sweep out weekend debris. Evidence has accumulated, tending to show that some of our exhibits have been drawn from a professional class of portrait subject, which excites a skepticism we don't see, when the professional is the exhibit-maker - the artist, as we say. I give you young Davenport, recalling two different figures in Raeburn, Master William Fraser of Reelig, at the Metropolitan, and Mr Niel Gow at the National Gallery in Edinburgh. Now, we have been given to understand that he accepts fees for such conduct, which we thought it only fair to disclose. Then, too, an agreable aspect is often discerned in our exhibits, for which the texts furnish a frame in every sense of the word.

We are non-professional, which casts a suspicion that we may be up to some preferential mischief. The previous posting brought the matter to an un-foreseen nadir, in the offering of a comment in favour of exploiting one's evidence for a proposition which it refutes, against which this page has stood with some tiresome regularity. It's true that we make very little effort to obscure who we are, a page antagonistic to seducing boys. A sidebar search will make that clear enough. We're prepared to be reviled for our objections, but we won't hear them invoked as our preferences. This page will not be used against itself. The Raeburn posting stays.

Mr Patrick Moir, Australian Coll.