d the nerve to discuss any of the topics on which
I now pronounced so authoritatively? And yet, these were all accidents
of my existence,--no more me than was the color of _his_ whiskers mine
who vaccinated me for cow-pock. The man Potts was himself through all;
he was neither compounded of senna and salts, nor amalgamated
with sarsaparilla and the acids; but by the cruel laws of a harsh
conventionality it was decreed otherwise, and the trade of the father
descends to the son in every estimate of all he does and says and
thinks. The converse of the proposition I was now to feel in the success
I obtained in this company. I was as the Germans would say, "Der Herr
Potts selbst, nicht nach seinen Begebenheiten"--the man Potts, not the
creature of his belongings.

The man thus freed from his "antecedents," and owning no "relatives,"
feels like one to whom a great, a most unlimited, credit has been
opened, in matter of opinion. Not reduced to fashion his sentiments by
some supposed standard becoming his station, he roams at will over the
broad prairie of life, enough if he can show cause why he says this or
thinks that, without having to defend himself for his parentage, and the
place he was born in. Little wonder if, with such a sum to my credit,
I drew largely on it; little wonder if I were dogmatical and
demonstrative; little wonder if, when my reason grew wearied with facts,
I reposed on my imagination in fiction.

Be it remembered, however, that I only became what I have set down here
after an excellent dinner, a considerable quantity of champagne, and no
small share of claret, strong-bodied enough to please the priest. From
the moment we sat down to table, I conceived for him a sort of distrust.
He was painfully polite and civil; he had a soft, slippery, Clare
accent; but there was a malicious twinkle in his eye that showed he was
by nature satirical. Perhaps because we were more reading men than the
others that it was we soon found ourselves pitted against each other
in argument, and this not upon one, but upon every possible topic that
turned up. Hammond, I found, also stood by the priest; Oxley was _my_
backer; and his Lordship played umpire. Dyke was a shrewd, sarcastic dog
in his way, but he had no chance with me. How mercilessly I treated his
church!--he pushed me to it,--what an _expose_ did I make of the
Pope and his government, with all their extortions and cruelties! how
ruthlessly I showed them up as the swo