"
"All right, old man," said Severne, and went away briskly for the bills.
When he got from the balcony into the room, his steps flagged a little;
it struck him that ink takes time to dry, and more time to darken.
As _The Rover,_ with her nimble cargoes, was first cousin to _The Flying
Dutchman,_ with his crew of ghosts, so the bills received by Severne, as
purchase-money for his ship, necessarily partook of that ship's aerial
character. Indeed they existed, as the schoolmen used to say, in _posse,_
but not in _esse._ To be less pedantic and more exact, they existed as
slips of blank paper, with a Government stamp. To give them a mercantile
character for a time--viz., until presented for payment--they must be
drawn by an imaginary ship-owner or a visionary merchant, and indorsed by
at least one shadow, and a man of straw.
The man of straw sat down to inscribe self and shadows, and became a
dishonest writer of fiction; for the art he now commenced appears to fall
short of forgery proper, but to be still more distinct from justifiable
fiction. The ingenious Mr. De Foe's certificate by an aeial justice of
the peace to the truth of his ghostly narrative comes nearest to it, in
my poor reading.
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