You make a great show, indeed, with building and cultivation; but stock is not capital, any more than the fat of a corpulent man is health or strength." "Surely, Mr.Touchwood," said Bindloose, who felt his own account in the modern improvements, "a set of landlords, living like lairds in good earnest, and tenants with better housekeeping than the lairds used to have, and facing Whitsunday and Martinmas as I would face my breakfast--if these are not signs of wealth, I do not know where to seek for them." "They are signs of folly, sir," replied Touchwood; "folly that is poor, and renders itself poorer by desiring to be thought rich; and how they come by the means they are so ostentatious of, you, who are a banker, perhaps can tell me better than I can guess." "There is maybe an accommodation bill discounted now and then, Mr.
Touchwood; but men must have accommodation, or the world would stand still--accommodation is the grease that makes the wheels go." "Ay, makes them go down hill to the devil," answered Touchwood.

"I left you bothered about one Ayr bank, but the whole country is an Air bank now, I think--And who is to pay the piper ?--But it's all one--I will see little more of it--it is a perfect Babel, and would turn the head of a man who has spent his life with people who love sitting better than running, silence better than speaking, who never eat but when they are hungry, never drink but when thirsty, never laugh without a jest, and never speak but when they have something to say.

But here, it is all run, ride, and drive--froth, foam, and flippancy--no steadiness--no character." "I'll lay the burden of my life," said Dame Dods, looking towards her friend Bindloose, "that the gentleman has been at the new Spaw-waal yonder!" "Spaw do you call it, madam ?--If you mean the new establishment that has been spawned down yonder at St.Ronan's, it is the very fountain-head of folly and coxcombry--a Babel for noise, and a Vanity-fair for nonsense--no well in your swamps tenanted by such a conceited colony of clamorous frogs." "Sir, sir!" exclaimed Dame Dods, delighted with the unqualified sentence passed upon her fashionable rivals, and eager to testify her respect for the judicious stranger who had pronounced it,--"will you let me have the pleasure of pouring you out a dish of tea ?" And so saying, she took bustling possession of the administration which had hitherto remained in the hands of Mr.Bindloose himself.
"I hope it is to your taste, sir," she continued, when the traveller had accepted her courtesy with the grateful acknowledgment, which men addicted to speak a great deal usually show to a willing auditor.
"It is as good as we have any right to expect, ma'am," answered Mr.
Touchwood; "not quite like what I have drunk at Canton with old Fong Qua--but the Celestial Empire does not send its best tea to Leadenhall Street, nor does Leadenhall Street send its best to Marchthorn." "That may be very true, sir," replied the dame; "but I will venture to say that Mr.Bindloose's tea is muckle better than you had at the Spaw-waal yonder." "Tea, madam!--I saw none--Ash leaves and black-thorn leaves were brought in in painted canisters, and handed about by powder-monkeys in livery, and consumed by those who liked it, amidst the chattering of parrots and the squalling of kittens.

I longed for the days of the Spectator, when I might have laid my penny on the bar, and retired without ceremony--But no--this blessed decoction was circulated under the auspices of some half-crazed blue-stocking or other, and we were saddled with all the formality of an entertainment, for this miserable allowance of a cockle-shell full of cat-lap per head." "Weel, sir," answered Dame Dods, "all I can say is, that if it had been my luck to have served you at the Cleikum Inn, which our folk have kept for these twa generations, I canna pretend to say ye should have had such tea as ye have been used to in foreign parts where it grows, but the best I had I wad have gi'en it to a gentleman of your appearance, and I never charged mair than six-pence in all my time, and my father's before me." "I wish I had known the Old Inn was still standing, madam," said the traveller; "I should certainly have been your guest, and sent down for the water every morning--the doctors insist I must use Cheltenham, or some substitute, for the bile--though, d--n them, I believe it's only to hide their own ignorance.

And I thought this Spaw would have been the least evil of the two; but I have been fairly overreached--one might as well live in the inside of a bell.