In that manufacturing town which has lately risen to considerable eminence, called Dunfermline, there lived, some time ago, a person of the name of Duncan Schulebred, by trade a weaver--or, as he chose rather to be called, a manufacturer, a term which the inhabitants love to apply to every man who can boast the property of a loom and its restless appendage. We believe the people of that town to be as honest and industrious as those of any mercantile place in the kingdom; but they have too much good sense to think of claiming for their entire community, a total exemption from the inroads of dishonesty and deceit--vices which prevail in every corner of this land. Unhappily, the individual we have mentioned had allowed himself to become a slave to those evil propensities which are concerned in the collecting together of ill-gotten wealth, and never left any feasible plan unattempted, which might present any chance of gratifying the ruling passion by which he was mastered. He was a little man, with a florid complexion, and the small twinkling eye which almost invariably accompanies cunning. His walk was that of a man accustomed to carry under his left arm a web of huckaback, and in his right hand a staff ellwand; and his style of speech, bland, conciliating, and persuasive, was derived from the habit of wheedling customers into exorbitant terms. He was a great coward, as well physical as moral--the consequence, doubtless, of being a dishonest trader. Altogether too contemptible to be hated, his greatest enemy was his own conscience, of which he stood in such terrible awe, that his wife was often obliged, during the dark hours of the reign of that mysterious agent, to rise and light a lamp for the purpose of exorcising the spirit which, seated on his heart, tormented him with the gnawing inflictions of its pain. This trick of his conscience had hitherto been unable to prevent Duncan from using his short ellwand, and acting dishonestly. The moment he got into daylight and active life, he, like all other cowards, despised the enemy from which he thought himself at the time safe. In a strong-minded man, conscience produces resolution; in a weak, it gives rise merely to fears and vacillation. It is not often that greedy, cunning men are given to intoxication; yet we are obliged to add this vice to the character of Duncan Schulebred, who, exhibiting, however, the one vice in the other, never failed to get intoxicated, if he could effect his purpose at the cost of his neighbour--a result he often achieved, by leaving the tavern after he had got enough--on pretence of returning in a few minutes to the company of his unsuspecting victim.