thereof, forsaking its staple in the roof, would disclose amid the
fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days
have long since gone by--at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian
angel was either wofully ignorant of metallurgy, or the stores had been
surreptitiously ransacked; and as to the other expedient, I frankly
confess I should have liked some better security for its result than the
precedent of the "Heir of Lynn."

It is a great consolation, amid all the evils of life, to know that,
however bad your circumstances may be, there is always somebody else
in nearly the same predicament. My chosen friend and ally, Bob
M'Corkindale, was equally hard up with myself, and, if possible, more
averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man--that is, in
a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam
Smith, and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies
of the "Wealth of Nations." The result was a crude farrago of notions
regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and
relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring
audience at "The Crow"; for Bob was by no means--in the literal
acceptation of the word--a dry philosopher. On the contrary, he
perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery, and was
understood to be the compiler of a statistical work entitled "A Tour
through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland." It had very early occurred
to me, who knew as much of political economy as of the bagpipes, that a
gentleman so well versed in the art of accumulating national wealth
must have some remote ideas of applying his principles profitably on a
smaller scale. Accordingly I gave M'Corkindale an unlimited invitation
to my lodgings; and, like a good hearty fellow as he was, he
availed himself every evening of the license; for I had laid in a
fourteen-gallon cask of Oban whisky, and the quality of the malt was
undeniable.

These were the first glorious days of general speculation. Railroads
were emerging from the hands of the greater into the fingers of the
lesser capitalists. Two successful harvests had given a fearful stimulus
to the national energy; and it appeared perfectly certain that all the
populous towns would be united, and the rich agricultural districts
intersected, by the magical bands of iron. The columns of the newspapers
teemed every week with the parturition of novel schemes; and the