day to Court to kiss Her Majesty's hand, and came down to his new grand house at Boxall Hill, Sir Roger Scatcherd, Bart.
'And now, my lady,' said he, when he explained to his wife the high state to which she had been called by his exertions and the Queen's prerogative, 'let's have a bit of dinner and a drop of som'at hot.' Now the drop of som'at hot signified a dose of alcohol sufficient to send three ordinary men very drunk to bed.
While conquering the world Roger Scatcherd had not conquered his old bad habits. Indeed, he was the same man at all points that he had been when formerly seen about the streets of Barchester with his stonemason's apron tucked up round his waist. The apron he had abandoned, but not the heavy prominent thoughtful brow, with the wildly-flashing eye beneath it. He was still the same good companion, and still also the same hard-working hero. In this only had he changed, that now he would work, and some said equally well, whether he were drunk or sober. Those who were mostly inclined to make a miracle of him—and there was a school of worshippers ready to adore him as their idea of a divine, superhuman, miracle-moving, inspired prophet—declared that his wondrous work was best done, his calculations most quickly and most truly made, that he saw with most accurate eye into the far-distant balance of profit and loss, when he was under the influence of the rosy god. To these worshippers his breakings-out, as his periods of intemperance were called in his own set, were his moments of peculiar inspiration—his divine frenzies, in which he communicated most closely with those deities who preside over trade transactions; his Eleusinian mysteries, to approach him in which was permitted only to a few of the most favoured.
'Scatcherd has been drunk this week past,' they would say one to another, when the moment came at which it was to be decided whose offer should be accepted for constructing a harbour to hold all the commerce of Lancashire, or to make a railway from Bombay to Canton. 'Scatcherd has been drunk this week past: I am told that he has taken over three gallons of brandy.' And then they felt sure that none but Scatcherd would be called upon to construct the dock or make the railway.
But be this as it may, be it true or false that Sir Roger was most efficacious when in his cups, there can be no doubt that he could not wallow for a week in brandy, six or seven times every year, without in a great measure injuring, and permanently injuring, the outward man. Whatever immediate effect such symposiums might have on the inner mind—symposiums indeed they were not; posiums I will call them, if I may be allowed; for in latter life, when he drank heavily, he drank alone—how-
