who preside
over trade transactions; his Eleusinian mysteries, to approach him in
which was permitted only to a few of the most favoured.

"Scatcherd has been drunk this week past," they would say one to
another, when the moment came at which it was to be decided whose
offer should be accepted for constructing a harbour to hold all the
commerce of Lancashire, or to make a railway from Bombay to Canton.
"Scatcherd has been drunk this week past; I am told that he has taken
over three gallons of brandy." And then they felt sure that none but
Scatcherd would be called upon to construct the dock or make the
railway.

But be this as it may, be it true or false that Sir Roger was most
efficacious when in his cups, there can be no doubt that he could not
wallow for a week in brandy, six or seven times every year, without
in a great measure injuring, and permanently injuring, the outward
man. Whatever immediate effect such symposiums might have on the
inner mind--symposiums indeed they were not; posiums I will call
them, if I may be allowed; for in latter life, when he drank heavily,
he drank alone--however little for evil, or however much for good the
working of his brain might be affected, his body suffered greatly. It
was not that he became feeble or emaciated, old-looking or inactive,
that his hand shook, or that his eye was watery; but that in the
moments of his intemperance his life was often not worth a day's
purchase. The frame which God had given to him was powerful beyond
the power of ordinary men; powerful to act in spite of these violent
perturbations; powerful to repress and conquer the qualms and
headaches and inward sicknesses to which the votaries of Bacchus are
ordinarily subject; but this power was not without its limit. If
encroached on too far, it would break and fall and come asunder, and
then the strong man would at once become a corpse.

Scatcherd had but one friend in the world. And, indeed, this friend
was no friend in the ordinary acceptance of the word. He neither ate
with him nor drank with him, nor even frequently talked with him.
Their pursuits in life were wide asunder. Their tastes were all
different. The society in which each moved very seldom came together.
Scatcherd had nothing in unison with this solitary friend; but he
trusted him, and he trusted no other living creature on God's earth.

He trusted this man; but even him he did not trust thoroughly; not at
least as one friend should tru