To Mrs Frances Anna Dunlop of Dunlop

                                                Mauchline, 28th April 1788

Madam,

Your powers of Reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even tho’ I was not really guilty.-
As I commence Farmer at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty throng; but that is not all.  As I got the offer of the Excise business without solicitation; and as it cost me only six weeks attendance for instructions to entitle me to a Commission, which Commission lies by me, and at any future period on my petition can be resumed; I thought five & thirty pounds a years was no bad dernier resort for a poor Poet, if fortune in her jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up.- For this reason I am at present attending these instructions to have them completed before Whitsunday.  Still, madam I prepared with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and I came to my brother’s on Saturday night to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding I slept in an apartment where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sifted thro’ numberless apertures in the window, walls. Etc in consequence I was on Sunday, Monday & part of Tuesday unable to stir out of bed with all the miserable effects of a violent cold.-

You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim, “Le vrai n’est toujours le vraisemblable,” – Your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for  a Correspondence which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments’ of my future life.- You see the consequence of all this.- I like to sit down, when I write to a Friend indeed, and give way to the unpremeditated miscellaneous effusions of my heart; instead of which, my unlucky Cold has forced me on a drawling epistle of dull apologies, that can serve no positive good end, but negatively I trust, will prevent that excommunication from the much esteemed privileges of your friendship, which, in appearance I so justly deserved; & which I dread infinitely more that all the Anathemas of the Vatican, or the equally infallible General Assembly.

As I hold no letter, but what the Quarrel-Brokers, alias the lawyers, call, A Reply I shall trouble you with a letter by our Edinburgh Carrier, who I believe sets out nest week.-

I shall be coming and going frequently to Ayrshire thro’ the Summer; and if I am not so happy as to meet you at Dunlop, I shall be in Edinburgh some time before Midsummer, when if the irresistible hand of Predestination do not impose, I shall see you at Haddington.-Your books have delighted me; but more of this in my nestg.-

                                    I have the honor to be, Madam,
                                           Your much indebted humble servant
                                                   Robt Burns