extracted from the first hedge on his pilgrimage; and who, after
having worked himself a step or two up the ladder of life, had won
the virgin heart of the only daughter of a highly respectable
merchant of Duke's Place, with whom he inherited the honest fruits
of a long series of ingenuous dealings.

Mr. Mac Crotchet had derived from his mother the instinct, and from
his father the rational principle, of enriching himself at the
expense of the rest of mankind, by all the recognised modes of
accumulation on the windy side of the law. After passing many
years in the Alley, watching the turn of the market, and playing
many games almost as desperate as that of the soldier of Lucullus,
the fear of losing what he had so righteously gained predominated
over the sacred thirst of paper-money; his caution got the better
of his instinct, or rather transferred it from the department of
acquisition to that of conservation. His friend, Mr. Ramsbottom,
the zodiacal mythologist, told him that he had done well to
withdraw from the region of Uranus or Brahma, the Maker, to that of
Saturn or Veeshnu, the Preserver, before he fell under the eye of
Jupiter or Seva, the Destroyer, who might have struck him down at a
blow.

It is said that a Scotchman, returning home after some years'
residence in England, being asked what he thought of the English,
answered: "They hanna ower muckle sense, but they are an unco braw
people to live amang;" which would be a very good story, if it were
not rendered apocryphal by the incredible circumstance of the
Scotchman going back.

Mr. Mac Crotchet's experience had given him a just title to make,