My uncle, Scipio Dodger, was one of the most extraordinary men of the age.
Figure to yourself a short, stout, and rather pot-bellied individual, with
keen eyes moving in a perpetual twinkle, a mouth marked at the corners
with innumerable tiny wrinkles, hair of the shortest and most furzy white,
scant at the front, but gathered behind into a pig-tail about the size of
a cigar; and you have a fair full-length portrait of my avuncular
relative. My father, in early years, had married an American lady--I must
own it--a Pennsylvanian, and uncle Scipio was her brother. I was the only
fruit of that union, and at an early age was left an orphan in
circumstances of sufficient embarrassment. A mere accident saved me from
being shipped off to America like a parcel of cotton goods. Uncle Scip,
who was left my guardian, had some transaction which required his personal
attendance at Liverpool. He set foot for the first time on the old
country--calculated that it was an almighty fine location--guessed that a
spry hand might do a good streak of business there; and, in short, finally
repudiated America, as coolly as America has since repudiated her
engagements. He would settle down to no fixed trade or profession; but, as
he possessed a considerable capital, he entered into the field of
speculation. Never, perhaps, was there a man better qualified by nature
for success in that usually dangerous game. His powers and readiness of
calculation were unequalled--his information quite startling, from its
extent and accuracy--his fore-sight, a gift like prophecy. I verily
believe he never lost a single shilling in any one of the numerous schemes
in which he was engaged; what he made, I have private reasons for keeping
to myself. If the apostolic order against taking scrip is to be considered
in a literal sense, Scipio was a frightful defaulter. He scampered out of
one railway into another like a rabbit perambulating a warren, and was the
wonder of the brokers and the glory of the Stock Exchange. Men perverted
his Roman prefix, and knew him solely by the endearing appellation of old
Scripio.

To me, who was his only living relative, Mr Dodger supplied the place of a
parent. He placed me at school and college, gave me as good an education
and liberal allowance as I required, and came down regularly once a-year
to Scotland, to see how I was getting on. Scripio, though he never failed
to taunt the Scotch with their poverty, was, in reality, very par