I have in innate
dispositions, both good and bad.

James Longford's disposition was most decidedly bad by nature--he was
constantly, even when a mere schoolboy, in mischief, and that, too, of a
kind that marked a malicious and cruel temper. His father in vain
exhausted kindness and severity, in the hope of subduing this most
unhappy temper; but neither the infliction of punishment, that he
deserved twenty times a day, nor the caresses of the tenderest parental
affection, appeared to have the least influence in mollifying his
stubborn and morose disposition--he seemed to be one of those whom St.
Paul characterizes, in that tremendous first chapter of the Epistle to
the Romans, as being "without natural affection." Notwithstanding all
these faults, he had naturally a strong mind and good talents; so that
by the time he had attained his eighteenth year he was, at one and the
same time, one of the most ungovernable and ill-tempered boys and best
scholars in Parson Crabtree's seminary of some fifty in number.

At this period his father placed him in the counting-room of a wealthy
mercantile house in the city of New-York. Here his good education and
natural quickness soon procured him the favorable notice of his
employers, while his constant and active duties seemed to have
smothered, at least for a time, his malicious temper. Before the
expiration of a year he had acquired the good will and confidence of the
merchants whom he served; but by this time the pleasures and temptations
of the "Commercial Emporium" had begun to attract his inexperienced
eyes, and his disposition seemed to have taken a new turn.

With all the stubborn wilfulness and unfeeling carelessness of
consequences that characterized his temper, he plunged into all manner
of vicious indulgences; but what seemed to attract him the most
irresistibly, and fix him the most firmly, was a fondness for gambling.
The "time-honored" black-legs of the billiard and roulette tables were,
however, an overmatch for an inexperienced lad of nineteen, and, as
might have been expected, he was soon stripped, thoroughly "cleaned
out." It was then that the idea of replenishing his pockets from the
counting-room trunk first presented itself to his mind, and, without
much hesitation or compunction of conscience, he took small sums from
time to time.

It is needless to trace his progress more minutely--he finished by
forging a check for a thousand dollars, which forgery was subs