uld open before him, some
ground must be won, some position gained. That I assume to be something
that I am not, is simply to say that I trade upon credit. If my future
transactions be all honorable and trustworthy,--if by a fiction,
only known to my own heart, I acquire that eminence from which I
can distribute benefits to hundreds,--who is to stigmatize me as a
fraudulent trader?

Is it not a well-known fact, that many of those now acknowledged as the
wealthiest of men, might, at some time or other of their lives, have
been declared insolvent had the real state of their affairs been known?
The world, however, had given them its confidence, and time did the
rest. Let the same world be but as generous towards _me!_ The day will
come,--I say it confidently and boldly,--the day will come when I can
"show my books," and "point to my balance-sheet." When Archimedes asked
for a base on which to rest his lever, he merely uttered the great
truth, that some one fixed point is essential to the success of a motive
power.

It is by our use or abuse of opportunity we are either good or bad
men. The physician is not less conversant with noxious drags than the
poisoner; the difference lies in the fact that the one employs his skill
to alleviate suffering, the other to work out evil and destruction. If
I, therefore, but make some feigned station in life the groundwork from
which I can become the benefactor of my fellowmen, I shall be good
and blameless. My heart tells me how well and how fairly I mean by the
world: I would succor the weak, console the afflicted, and lift up the
oppressed; and if to carry out grand and glorious conceptions of this
kind all that be needed is a certain self-delusion which may extend
its influence to others, "Go in," I say, "Potts; be all that your fancy
suggests,--

Dives, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regain,

--Be rich, honored and fair, a prince or a begum,--but, above all, never
distrust your destiny, or doubt your star."

CHAPTER VIII. IMAGINATION STIMULATED BY BRANDY AND WATER.

So absorbed was I in the reflections of which my last chapter is the
record, that I utterly forgot how time was speeding, and perceived
at last, to my great surprise, that I had strayed miles away from the
Rosary, and that evening was already near. The spires and roofs of a
town were distant about a mile at a bend of the river, and for this I
now made, determined on no account to turn back, for how could