But it is necessary
to speak rather more at length of the landlord than of the house over
which he presided.
Hugh Crombie was one for whom most of the wise men, who considered the
course of his early years, had predicted the gallows as an end before he
should arrive at middle age. That these prophets of ill had been deceived
was evident from the fact that the doomed man had now passed the fortieth
year, and was in more prosperous circumstances than most of those who had
wagged their tongues against him. Yet the failure of their forebodings was
more remarkable than their fulfilment would have been.
He had been distinguished, almost from his earliest infancy, by those
precocious accomplishments, which, because they consist in an imitation of
the vices and follies of maturity, render a boy the favorite plaything of
men. He seemed to have received from nature the convivial talents, which,
whether natural or acquired, are a most dangerous possession; and, before
his twelfth year, he was the welcome associate of all the idle and
dissipated of his neighborhood, and especially of those who haunted the
tavern of which he had now become the landlord. Under this course of
education, Hugh Crombie grew to youth and manhood; and the lovers of good
words could only say in his favor, that he was a greater enemy to himself
than to any one else, and that, if he should reform, few would have a
better chance of prosperity than he.
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