That was very well, but there was the devil to pay besides. Every
wastrel I sent off empty-handed was my enemy; the agents of the
Englishmen looked sourly at me; and many a man who was swindled grossly
by the Bristol buyers saw me as a marauder instead of a benefactor. For
this I was prepared; but what staggered me was the way that some of the
better sort of the gentry came to regard me. It was not that they did
not give me their custom; that I did not expect, for gunpowder alone
would change the habits of a Virginian Tory. But my new business seemed
to them such a downcome that they passed me by with a cock of the chin.
Before they had treated me hospitably, and made me welcome at their
houses. I had hunted the fox with them--very little to my credit; and
shot wildfowl in their company with better success. I had dined with
them, and danced in their halls at Christmas. Then I had been a
gentleman; now I was a shopkeeper, a creature about the level of a
redemptioner. The thing was so childish that it made me angry. It was
right for one of them to sell his tobacco on his own wharf to a tarry
skipper who cheated him grossly, but wrong for me to sell kebbucks and
linsey-woolsey at an even bargain. I gave up the puzzle.
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