Note 18 — THE MAIN-CHANCE

[‘Have I not seen a household where love was not?’ says the author of the ‘Betrothed;’ ‘where, although there was worth and good will, and enough of the means of life, all was embittered by regrets, which were not only vain, but criminal?’—‘I would take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound,’ or in preference to that of any man living, though I was told in the streets of Edinburgh, that Dr. Jamieson, the author of the ‘Dictionary,’ was quite as great a man!]