read with disappointment your corre- ' spondent's criticism of Strix
in your issue of April 5. With disappointment that apparently not everybody gets the same feeling of satisfaction and agreement with the atithor on reading Strix's essays as I.
Your correspOndent cites two essays for particular criticism : 'The British Nihilists' and 'The Point of No Return.' Let us consider tliese in turn.1 Mr. Waterhouse thinks it a 'now outmoded trick of seek- ing to' deride a social inferior 'by laborious lopping of the aspirates from the offender's reported speech.' Is this in fact derision? I 'think not. If a person pro- nounces a word, say help, as 'elp, why not spell it so? Your correspondent admits 'regional intona- tion in the north and west, but with all the aitches intact.' This is surely because the dropping of aitches is the habit of the Cockney. Certainly, the Liverpool whacker does not drop his aitches as does iris metropolitan counterpart.
'The Point of No Return' was not intended, I am sure, as a criticism of the literary style of Seal Morning; this, as Mr. Waterhouse points out, was done elsewhere in the same issue. No, Strix's essay was concerned with the implausibility of the material based on. personal knowledge of the Highlands. This was hardly 'niggling' or 'atrabiliar ,dissection of some harmless book.' It was merely an essay con- cerned with the inconsistencies in Miss Farre's book with fact.
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