Reality
was his romance; he gloried to be thus engaged: he
wallowed in his business. Suppose a man to dig up a
galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish schooner
keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by
the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure
ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach; such
an one might realise a greater material spoil; he
should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton
when he cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald
office. Every dollar gained was like something brought
ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture made was
like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand
into the plexus of the money-market he was delightedly
aware of how he shook the pillars of existence, turned
out men, as at a battle-cry, to labour in far
countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of
millionaires.
I could never fathom the full extent of his
speculations; but there were five separate businesses
which he avowed and carried like a banner. The
THIRTEEN STAR GOLDEN STATE BRANDY, WARRANTED ENTIRE (a
very flagrant distillation) filled a great part of his
thoughts, and was kept before the public in an eloquent
but misleading treatise, "Why Drink French Brandy? A
Word to the Wise.
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