uncle; it was strong in my mind his father had been fool enough to
indoctrinate the same, which was no wise beginning: and when I looked upon the
man before me, still so handsome, so apt a speaker, with so great a variety of
fortunes to relate, I saw he was the very personage to captivate a boyish fancy.
John Paul had left only that morning; it was not to be supposed he had been
altogether dumb upon his favourite subject: so that here would be Mr. Alexander
in the part of Dido, with a curiosity inflamed to hear; and there would be the
Master, like a diabolical Æneas, full of matter the most pleasing in the world
to any youthful ear, such as battles, sea-disasters, flights, the forests of the
West, and (since his later voyage) the ancient cities of the Indies. How
cunningly these baits might be employed, and what an empire might be so founded,
little by little, in the mind of any boy, stood obviously clear to me. There was
no inhibition, so long as the man was in the house, that would be strong enough
to hold these two apart; for if it be hard to charm serpents, it is no very
difficult thing to cast a glamour on a little chip of manhood not very long in
breeches. I recalled an ancient sailor-man who dwelt in a lone house beyond the
Figgate Whins (I believe, he called it after Portobello), and how the boys would
troop out of Leith on a Saturday, and sit and listen to his swearing tales, as
thick as crows about a carrion: a thing I often remarked as I went by, a young
student, on my own more meditative holiday diversion. Many of these boys went,
no doubt, in the face of an express command; many feared, and even hated, the
old brute of whom they made their hero; and I have seen them flee from him when
he was tipsy, and stone him when he was drunk. And yet there they came each
Saturday! How much more easily would a boy like Mr. Alexander fall under the
influence of a high-looking, high-spoken gentleman-adventurer, who should
conceive the fancy to entrap him; and the influence gained, how easy to employ
it for the child's perversion!
    I doubt if our enemy had named Mr. Alexander three times before I perceived
which way his mind was aiming - all this train of thought and memory passed in
one pulsation through my own - and you may say I started back