his favor, those even who were most forward to condemn
the vice to which he was invariably addicted. Not, be it
understood, that in naming seasons of rationality, we
mean seasons of positive abstemiousness; nor can this
well be, seeing that Sampson never passed a day of strict
sobriety during the last twenty years of his life. But,
it might be said, that his three divisions of day--morning,
noon and night--were characterized by three corresponding
divisions of drunkenness--namely, drunk, drunker, and
most drunk. It was, therefore, in the first stage of this
graduated scale, that Sampson appeared in his most amiable
and winning, because his least uproarious, mood. His
libations commenced at early morn, and his inebriety
became progressive to the close of the day. To one who
could ride home at night, as he invariably did, after
some twelve hours of hard and continued drinking, without
rolling from his horse, it would not be difficult to
enact the sober man in its earlier stages. As his
intoxication was relative to himself, so was his sobriety
in regard to others--and although, at mid-day, he might
have swallowed sufficient to have caused another man to
bite the dust, he looked and spoke, and acted, as if he
had been a model of temperance. If he passed a lady in
the street, or saw her at her window, Sampson Gattrie's
hat was instantly removed from his venerable head, and
his body inclined forward over his saddle-bow, with all
the easy grace of a well-born gentleman, and one accustomed
from infancy to pay deference to woman; nay, this at an
hour when he had imbibed enough of his favorite liquor
to have rendered most men insensible even to their