, and to
have thereby a large quantity of tobacco mortgaged to me. I hoped that
thus I would win the friendship and custom of the planters, since I
offered them a more convenient way of sale and higher profits. I hoped
by breaking down the English monopoly to induce a continual and
wholesome commerce in the land. For this purpose it was necessary to
get coin into the people's hands, so, using my uncle's credit, I had a
parcel of English money from the New York goldsmiths.

In a week I found myself the most-talked-of man in the dominion, and
soon I saw the troubles that credit brings. I had picked up a very
correct notion of the fortunes of most of the planters, and the men who
were most eager to sell to me were just those I could least trust. Some
fellow who was near bankrupt from dice and cock-fighting would offer me
five hundred hogsheads, when I knew that his ill-guided estate could
scarce produce half. I was not a merchant out of charity, and I had to
decline many offers, and so made many foes. Still, one way and another,
I was not long in clearing out my store, and I found myself with some
three times the amount of tobacco in prospect that I had sent home at
the last harvest.

That was very well, but there was the devil to pay besides. Every
wastrel I sent off empty-handed was my enemy; the agents of the
Englishmen looked sourly at me; and many a man who was swindled grossly
by the Bristol buyers saw me as a marauder instead of a benefactor. For
this I was prepared; but what staggered me was the way that some of the
better sort of the gentry came to regard me. It was not that they did
not give me their custom; that I did not expect, for gunpowder alone
would change the habits of a Virginian Tory. But my new business seemed
to them such a downcome that they passed me by with a cock of the chin.
Before they had treated me hospitably, and made me welcome at their
houses. I had hunted the fox with them--very little to my credit; and
shot wildfowl in their company with better success. I had dined with
them, and danced in their halls at Christmas. Then I had been a
gentleman; now I was a shopkeeper, a creature about the level of a
redemptioner. The thing was so childish that it made me angry. It was
right for one of them to sell his tobacco on his own wharf to a tarry
skipper who cheated him grossly, but wrong for me to sell kebbucks and
linsey-woolsey at an even bargain. I gave up the puzzle. Some folks'
notions of ge