Mr. Campbell, who held money in very little esteem, and valued it so much too little, that he has often had my reprehensions on that head, paused a little, and after looking earnestly in the gentleman's face, and reading there, as I suppose, in that little space of time in general, according to the power of the second-sight, that what concerned him was highly momentous, wrote him this answer; That he would comply with his requests, adjourn his other clients to the day following, and set apart all the remnant of that, till night, for inspecting the future occurrences of which he had a mind to be made a master.
There is certainly a very keen appetite in curiosity; it cannot stay for satisfaction, it is pressing for its necessary repast, and is without all patience: hunger and thirst are not appetites more vehement and more hard and difficult to be repressed than that of curiosity; nothing but the present now is able to allay it. A more expressive picture of this I never beheld than in the faces of some, and the murmurs and complaints of others, in that little inquisitive company, when the unwelcome note was given about signifying an adjournment for only twenty-four hours.
The colour of a young woman there came and went a hundred times, if possible, in the space of two minutes; she blushed like a red rose this moment, and in the switch of an eyelash she was all over as pale as a white one: the suitor, whose name her heart had gone pit-a-pat for the space of an hour to be informed of from the pen of a seer, was now deferred a whole day longer; she was once or twice within an ace of swooning away, but he comforted her in particular, by telling her, though he said it only by way of jest, that the day following would be a more lucky day to consult about husbands than the present that she came on. The answer was a kind of cordial to her hopes, and brought her a little better to herself.
Two others, I remember, sisters and old maids, that it seems were misers, women ordinarily dressed and in blue aprons, and yet, by relation, worth no less than two thousand pounds each, were in a peck of troubles about his going and leaving them unsatisfied. They came upon an inquiry after goods that were stolen, and they complained that by next morning at that time, the thief might be got far enough off, and creep into so remote a corner, that he would put it beyond the power of the devil and the art of conjuration to find him out and bring him back again. The disturbance and anxiety that was to be seen in their countenances was like that which is to be beheld in the face of a great losing gamester, when his all, his last great stake, lies upon the table, and is just sweeping off by another winning hand into his own hat.
The next was a widow who bounced, because, as she pretended, he would not tell her what was best to do with her sons, and what profession it would be most happy for them to be put to; but in reality all the cause of the widow's fuming and fretting, was not that she wanted to provide for her sons, but for herself; she wanted a second husband, and was not half so solicitous about being put in a way of educating those children she had already, as of knowing when she should be in a likelihood of getting more. This was certainly in her thoughts, or else she would never have flounced about in her weed, from one end of the room to the other, and all the while of her passion, smile by fits upon the merchant, and leer upon a young pretty Irish fellow that was there. The young Irishman made use of a little eye-language; she grew appeased, went away in quite a good humour, scuttled too airily down stairs for a woman in her clothes, and the reason was certainly that she knew the matter before, which we took notice of presently after: the Irishman went precipitately after her down stairs without taking his leave.
But neither were the two misers for their gold, the virgin for a first husband, nor the widow for a second, half so eager as another married woman there was for the death of her spouse. She had put the question in so expecting a manner for a lucky answer, and with so much keen desire appearing plainly in her looks, that no big-bellied woman was ever more eager for devouring fruit; no young, hasty bridegroom, just married to a beauty, more impatient for night and enjoyment, than she was to know what she thought a more happy moment, the moment of her husband's last agonising gasp. As her expectation was the greatest, so was her disappointment, too, and consequently her disorder upon his going and leaving her unresolved. She was frantic, raging, and implacable; she was in such a fury at the delay of putting off her answer to the day following, that in her fury she acted as if she would have given herself an answer which of the two should die first, by choking herself upon the spot, with the indignation that swelled in her stomach and rose into her throat on that occasion. It may look like a romance to say it, but indeed they were forced to cut her lace, and then she threw out of the room with great passion; but yet had so much of the enraged wife left, beyond the enraged woman, as to return instantly up stairs, and signify very calmly, she would be certain to be there next day, and beseeched earnestly that she might not meet with a second disappointment.
All this hurry and bustle created a stay a little too tedious for the merchant, who began to be impatient himself, especially when word was brought up that a fresh company was come in; but Mr. Campbell was denied to them; and to put a stop to any more interruptions, the merchant and the dumb gentleman agreed to slip into a coach, drive to a tavern in the city, and settle matters of futurity over a bottle of French claret.
The first thing done at the tavern, was Mr. Campbell's saluting him upon a piece of paper by his name, and drinking his health. The next paper held a discourse of condolence for a disaster that was past long since; namely, a great and considerable loss that happened to his family, in the dreadful conflagration of the city of London. In the third little dialogue which they had together, he told the merchant that losses and advantages were general topics, which a person unskilled in that art might venture to assign to any man of his profession; it being next to impossible that persons who traffic should not sometimes gain, and sometimes lose. But, said Mr. Duncan Campbell, I will sketch out particularly, and specify to you some future misfortunes with which you will unavoidably meet; it is in your stars, it is in destiny, that you should have some trials, and therefore when you are forewarned, take a prudent care to be forearmed with patience, and by longanimity, and meekly and resignedly enduring your lot, render it more easy, since impatience can't avert it, and will only render it more burdensome and heavy. He gave these words to the merchant; who pressed for his opinion that moment. By your leave, resuming the pen, said the dumb gentleman, in writing, we will have this bottle out first and tap a fresh one, that you may be warmed with courage enough to receive the first speculative onset of ill fortune, that I shall predict to you, with a good grace, and that may perhaps enable you to meet it when it comes to reduce itself into action, with a manful purpose and all becoming resolution. The merchant agreed to the proposal, and put on an air of the careless and indifferent as well as he could, to signify that he had no need to raise up an artificial courage from the auxiliary forces of the grape. But nature, when hard pressed, will break through all disguises, and not only notwithstanding the air of pleasantry he gave himself, which appeared forced and constrained, but in spite of two or three sparkling and enlivening bumpers, a cloud of care would ever and anon gather and shoot heavily across his brow, though he laboured all he could to dispel it as quickly, and to keep fair weather in his countenance. Well, they had cracked the first bottle, and the second succeeded upon the table, and they called to blow a pipe together. This pipe Mr. Campbell found had a very ill effect; it is certainly a pensive kind of instrument, and fills a mind, anything so disposed, with disturbing thoughts, black fumes, and melancholy vapours, as certainly as it doth the mouth with smoke. It plainly took away even the little sparks of vivacity which the wine had given before; so he wrote for a truce of firing those sort of noxious guns any longer, and they laid down their arms by consent, and drank off the second bottle. A third immediately supplied its place, and at the first glass, the opening of the bottle, Mr. Campbell began to open to him his future case, in the following words: Sir, you have now some ventures at sea from such and such a place, to such a value. Don't be discomforted at the news which you certainly will have within three months, but it will be false at last, that they are by three different tempests made the prey of the great ocean, and enrich the bottom of the sea, the palace of Neptune. A worse storm than all these attends you at home, a wife who is, and will be more, the tempest of the house wherein she lives. The high and lofty winds of her vanity will blow down the pillars of your house and family; the high tide of her extravagance will roll on like a resistless torrent, and leave you at low water, and the ebb of all your fortunes. This is the highest and the most cutting disaster that is to befall you; your real shipwreck is not foreign but domestic; your bosom friend is to be your greatest foe, and even your powerful undoer for a time; mark what I say, and take courage, it shall be but for a time, provided you take courage; it will upon that condition be only a short and wholesome taste of adversity given to you, that you may relish returning prosperity with virtue, and with a greater return of thanks to Him that dispenses it at pleasure to mankind. Remember, courage and resignation is what I advise you to; use it, as becomes you, in your adversity, and believe that as I foretold that adversity, so I can foretell a prosperity will again be the consequence of those virtues; and the more you feel the one ought not to cast you down, but raise your hopes the more, that he who foretold you that so exactly, could likewise foretell you the other. The merchant was by this put into a great suspense of mind, but somewhat easier by the second prediction being annexed so kindly to the first fatal one. They crowned the night with a flask of Burgundy, and then parting, each went to their respective homes.
The reader may perchance wonder how I, who make no mention of my being there, as in truth I was not at the tavern, should be able to relate this as of my own knowledge; but if he pleases to have patience to the end of the story, he will have entire satisfaction in that point.
About half a year after, the merchant came again, told him that his prediction was too far verified, to his very dear cost, and that he was now utterly undone, and beyond any visible means of a future recovery, and doubting lest the other fortunate part of the prediction was only told him by way of encouragement, for groundless doubts and fears always attend a mind implunged in melancholy, besought him very earnestly to tell him candidly and sincerely if there was no real prospect of good, and rid him at once of the uneasiness of such a suspension of thought; But pray too, said he, with all the vehemence of repeated expostulation, satisfy me if there are any farther hopes on this side the grave?