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DANIEL CATHIE, TOBACCONIST.

DANIEL CATHIE was a reputable dealer in snuff, tobacco, and candles, in a considerable market-town in Scotland. His shop had, externally, something neat and enticing about it. In the centre of one window glowed a transparency of a ferocious-looking Celt, bonnetted, plaided, and kilted, with his unsheathed claymore in one hand, and his ram's-horn mull in the other; intended, no doubt, to emblem to the spectator, that from thence he recruited his animal spirits, drawing courage from the titillation of every pinch. Around him were tastefully distributed jars of different dimensions, bearing each the appropriate title of the various compounds within, from Maccuba and Lundyfoot, down to Beggar's Brown and Irish Blackguard. In the other, one half was allotted to tobaccopipes of all dimensions, tastefully arranged, so as to form a variety of figures, such as crosses, triangles, and squares; decorated, at intervals, with rolls of twist, serpentinings of pigtail, and monticuli of shag. The upper half displayed candles, distributed with equal exhibition of taste, from the prime four in the pound down to the halfpenny dip; some of a snowy whiteness, and others of an aged and delicate yellow tinge; enticing to the eyes of experienced housewives and spectacled cognoscenti. Over the door

rode a swarthy son of Congo, with broad nostrils, and eyes whose whites were fearfully dilated,-astride on a tobacco hogshead,-his woolly head bound with a coronal of feathers, -a quiver peeping over his shoulder, and a pipe in his cheeks, blown up for the eternity of his wooden existence, in the puffy ecstacy of inhalation.

Daniel himself, the autocrat of this domicile, was a little squat fellow, five feet and upwards, of a rosy complexion, with broad shoulders, and no inconsiderable rotundity of paunch. His eye was quick and sparkling, with something of an archness in its twinkle, as if he loved a joke occasionally, yet could wink at any one who presumed too far in tampering with his shrewdness. His forehead was bald, as well as no small portion of either temple; and the black curls, which projected above his ears, gave to his face the appearance of more than its actual breadth, which was scantily relieved by a light-blue spotted handkerchief, loosely tied around a rather apoplectic neck.

His dress was commonly a bottle-green jacket, single-breasted, and square in the tails; a striped cotton waistcoat; velveteen breeches, and light-blue ridge-and-furrow worsted stockings. A watch-chain, of a broad steel pattern, hung glittering before him, at which depended a small gold seal, a white almond-shaped shell, and a perforated Queen Anne's sixpence. Over all this lower display, suppose that you fasten a clean, glossy linen apron, and you have his entire portrait and appearance.

From very small beginnings, he had risen, by careful industry, to a respectable place in society, and was now the landlord of the property he had for many

years only rented. Daniel was a man of the world, and considered, perhaps not wrongly, that, in society, wealth stamped value upon worth, which otherwise was often little better than useless bullion; and that the voice of virtue, unless sustained by its able assistance, was little better than sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

All men have a ruling passion; some more, and others less praiseworthy. Daniel's was that of adding guinea to guinea. For this end he was up early and lay down late; toiled all day " in the eye of Phoebus," (his shop was on the sunny side of the street,) and was, at all times, to be found at the head of his concerns. This was Daniel's way of getting rich; and it was not the least sure one: others might sound as well in theory, but this answered to his satisfaction in practice.

Daniel had inherited nothing from his parents. His mother was widowed while he was yet in the fourth year of his age; and she had endeavoured, by a thousand honest shifts, to feed, clothe, and give him a tolerable education. At the age of fourteen he entered into the great arena of the world, as apprentice to a tallow-chandler; and passed five long years beside the melting-tub and the dipping-frame, to his own improvement, and his master's satisfaction, who always prophesied that his industry would make him something. Talents, in any degree, he never could be said strictly to have exhibited; but he had early shown, what are of surer service to temporal advancement, industry, sobriety, and a patient temper. From his small allowance of board-wages, something, even then, was contrived to be laid aside. "A pin a day's

a groat a-year," Daniel considered a wholesome maxim. He was at length promoted to the degree of journeyman, and weekly spared from back and stomach to the increase of his treasury.

He now consulted with his old mother on his plans in life; and the result of their deliberations was the taking a small, cheap shop, and the appearance of Daniel Cathie, as tobacconist and tallow-chandler, on his own footing.

Matters prospered, and he got on by slow, but steady paces. Business began to extend its circle around him, and his customers became more respectable and genteel. Old Mysie saw the prosperity of her son before she died. She had continued his housekeeper from the time of his commencing business; and he had always behaved towards her with the utmost filial respect. He parted from her, therefore, with sincere regret; but it was the will of Heaven, and he repined not at its decrees.

In a short time Daniel opened accounts with his banker. His establishment became more extensive ; and, after the lapse of a few, not unimproved, years, he took his place in the first rank of the merchants of a populous burgh.

Daniel now had discoveries made to him of many relatives, among people, who, before, had never thought of counting kin with him. This staggered him a little at first; but, as he held these matters lightly, he used jocularly to observe,-" Yes, yes, we are all descended from Adam."

His lengthening purse, and respectable character, pointed him out as a fit candidate for city honours, and the town-council pitched upon him as an eligible

person to grace their board. Thus was a new field opened for him. His reasoning powers were publicly called into play; and he had, what he had never before been accustomed to, luxurious eating and drinking, and both without being obliged to put his hand into his breeches-pocket. Daniel was a happy

man:

No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.

He now cogitated with his own mighty mind on the propriety of entering upon the matrimonial estate, and of paying his worship to the blind god. With the precision of a man of business, he took down in his note-book a list of the ladies who, he thought, might be fit candidates for the honour he intended them, the merits of the multitude being settled, in his mind, in exact accordance to the supposed extent of their treasures. Let not the reader mistake the term. By treasure he neither meant worth nor beauty, but the article which can be paid down in bullion or banknotes, possessing the magic properties of adding field to field, and tenement to tenement.

One after another, the pen was drawn through their names, as occasion offered of scrutinizing their claims more clearly, or as lack-success obliged him, until the candidates were reduced to a couple, Miss Jenny Drybones, a tall spinster, lean and ill-looking, somewhat beyond her grand climacteric; and Mrs Martha Bouncer, a brisk widow, fat, fair, and a few years on the better side of forty.

Miss Jenny, from her remote youth upwards, had been housekeeper to her brother, a retired wine-merchant, who departed this life six years before, without

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