THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN
and any observer can tell his possibilities. A touch of it—and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded himself? Another drop, and how futile are all the deceptions which he is wont to practice upon others! In St. Kitts once I drank wine with a most respectable merchant, a man who carried the Bible beside his snuff box, and referred to both almost as frequently as he did to the profit and balance on his ledger. And would you believe it? The next time he met me, he blamed me for the loss of many thousands of pounds. He even laid at my door certain reprehensible indiscretions of his wife, though I could have told him that night over the glasses that both were inevitable long before either occurred.
"But pray do not look at me so blankly, my son. It was not clairvoyance on my part—merely simple reasoning, aided by very excellent and very heady Madeira, How true it is that there is truth in wine—and money too, if the grape is used to the proper advantage.
"Again—some men talk of fortune at cards, good luck or bad, but as for me, I can tell how the luck will run by the number of bottles that are placed beside the
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