no harm in reading the part that treats of our present
visiter, and, with your permission, we will have it in common.--'Mr.
Aristabulus Bragg was born in one of the western counties of
Massachusetts, and emigrated to New-York, after receiving his
education, at the mature age of nineteen; at twenty-one he was
admitted to the bar, and for the last seven years he has been a
successful practitioner in all the courts of Otsego, from the
justice's to the circuit. His talents are undeniable, as he commenced
his education at fourteen and terminated it at twenty-one, the law-
course included. This man is an epitome of all that is good and all
that is bad, in a very large class of his fellow citizens. He is
quick-witted, prompt in action, enterprising in all things in which
he has nothing to lose, but wary and cautious in all things in which
he has a real stake, and ready to turn not only his hand, but his
heart and his principles to any thing that offers an advantage. With
him, literally, "nothing is too high to be aspired to, nothing too
low to be done." He will run for Governor, or for town-clerk, just as
opportunities occur, is expert in all the _practices_ of his
profession, has had a quarter's dancing, with three years in the
classics, and turned his attention towards medicine and divinity,
before he finally settled down into the law. Such a compound of
shrewdness, impudence, common-sense, pretension, humility,
cleverness, vulgarity, kind-heartedness, duplicity, selfishness, law-
honesty, moral fraud and mother wit, mixed up with a smattering of
learning and much penetration in practical things, can hardly be
described, as any one of his prominent qualities is certain to be met
by another quite as obvious that is almost its converse. Mr. Bragg,
in short, is purely a creature of circumstances, his qualities
pointing him out for either a member of congress or a deputy sheriff,
offices that he is equally ready to fill. I have employed him to
watch over the estate of your father, in the absence of the latter,
on the principle that one practised in tricks is the best qualified
to detect and expose them, and with the certainty that no man will
trespass with impunity, so long as the courts continue to tax bills
of costs with their present liberality.' You appear to know the
gentleman, Grace; is this character of him faithful?"

"I know nothing of bills of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know
that Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an