authority that was ludicrous to those who witnessed it—­and must have been witnessed to be conceived.  Occasionally a guttural “ugh” would be responded in mock approval of the speech, but more frequently a laugh, on the part of the more youthful of his red auditors, was the only notice taken.  His lecture concluded, Sampson would again brandish his cudgel, and vociferate another shout; then betaking himself to the nearest store, he would urge Silvertail upon the footway, and with a tap of his rude cudgel against the door, summon whoever was within, to appear with a glass of his favorite beverage.  And this would he repeat, until he had drained what he called his stirrup cup, at every shop in the place where the poisonous liquor was vended.

Were such a character to make his appearance in the Mother Country, endangering, to all perception, the lives of the Sovereign’s liege subjects, he would, if in London, be hunted to death like a wild beast, by at least one half of the Metropolitan police; and, if in a provincial town, would be beset by a posse of constables.  No one, however—­not even the solitary constable of Amherstburg, ever ventured to interfere with Sampson Gattrie, who was in some degree a privileged character.  Nay, strange as it may appear, notwithstanding his confirmed habit of inebriety, the old man stood high in the neighborhood, not only with simple but with gentle, for there were seasons when he evinced himself “a rational being,” and there was a dignity of manner about him, which, added to his then quietude of demeanour, insensibly interested in his favor, those even who were most forward to condemn the vice to which he was invariably addicted.  Not, be it understood, that in naming seasons of rationality, we mean seasons of positive abstemiousness; nor can this well be, seeing that Sampson never passed a day of strict sobriety during the last twenty years of his life.  But, it might be said, that his three divisions of day—­morning, noon and night—­were characterized by three corresponding divisions of drunkenness—­namely, drunk, drunker, and most drunk.  It was, therefore, in the first stage of this graduated scale, that Sampson appeared in his most amiable and winning, because his least uproarious, mood.  His libations commenced at early morn, and his inebriety became progressive to the close of the day.  To one who could ride home at night, as he invariably did, after some twelve hours of hard and continued drinking, without rolling from his horse, it would not be difficult to enact the sober man in its earlier stages.  As his intoxication was relative to himself, so was his sobriety in regard to others—­and although, at mid-day, he might have swallowed sufficient to have caused another man to bite the dust, he looked and spoke, and acted, as if he had been a model of temperance.  If he passed a lady in the street, or saw her at her window, Sampson Gattrie’s hat was instantly removed from his venerable head, and his body inclined forward