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brisk employment to the class to which Mr. James Algernon Harley belonged. The gentlemen who compose this class are really gentlemen. To be sure the regular man of business, who has a sure and reliable occupation, turns up his nose at them. Would not take their note for eighteen-pence, and sneers at the idea of their ever paying their debts. Herein great injustice is done them. It is true this class are generally so situated that an execution against their goods and chattels would probably reach nothing of consequence. They board at a first-class hotel, and have nothing to move when they change their lodgings, but their luggage. Still these people are in no sense dishonorable or dishonest. Sometimes, but not often-for they seldom take risks—they get swamped in a large transaction; but if they do, it is not the petty creditor who suffers. At times they are hard pressed for money, driven nearly to the wall; but something turns up to relieve them, and just as you expect to see one die out absolutely, you find him reärrayed in fresh plumage, on the top of a new and successful adventure. I repeat, these people are generally agreeable, kindhearted, over-plausible, it is true, but well-connected, and in good society. Reader, I confess in the characters I here endeavor to depict, I have some difficulty in drawing the line between what is honest, and right, and true, and its opposite. I confess that while I have a strong conviction, that the life these people live is not the life to lead, and is such a life as I would not lead, yet there is another set of men who are to me much more repulsive. Do not start- I mean the hard-visaged, sharp-cut, angular mathematically honest man! You know such a person, and perhaps you dread his companionship as much as I. Perhaps you don't. Perhaps you are the identical man himself! A man honest not from principle, but from a cold temperament, and a rightangled conformation. A man who never violated a moral rule; who, in the language of his friends, can be trusted with untold gold. Who performs and exacts to the uttermost farthing. Who could not cheat you in, accounts, because it would disturb the proportions of his ledger. Who is without an impulse, an emotion, a desire. Every thing with him is by scale and meas-this or that; all justice, no mercy; all requirement, no allowance.

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Such men are always rich men, because they are eminently selfish. Selfish and successful (as the world calls success) being true alliterations. To these persons the Eastern proverb applies: 'The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.'

To return to the class speculative. The persons of this class are pleasant companions, and generous in their expenditure, while their money lasts. If bachelors, they occupy in the favorite hotel a seat next the host,* and are surrounded by good fellows at least five deep. The best wines are called for without stint, and the dinner is prolonged always into the evening. If married, a similar scale is indulged in, but in a different way. There are parties to attend, an opera-box, and possibly a carriage (if matters have gone right) to

*It is proper to state, for the benefit of the reader who resides out of New-York, that in some of the fashionable hotels (Anglice taverns) of this city, the proprietor (Anglice landlord) is accustomed to sit at the head of the bachelors' table, and by patronizing smiles and gestures manifest his approbation of those of his guests' who spend money most freely-decorous and praiseworthy habit this.

provide for. When things go adversely, the scene changes, an economical scale is submitted to, and they wait for another turn of the wheel. And so they manage to preserve a great deal of this life's romance - which is the true essence of life, after all—and which the treadmill man of business loses completely and forever by his iron course of existence.

The fascination which attends the labors of the class speculative is easily understood. There is a great charm in a pursuit where room is left for the imagination to have full sway. What cannot be reduced to a certainty, but is entirely subject to the calculations of a sanguine temperament, is sure to afford extraordinary pleasure and gratification; and while, after various experiences, I would avoid the career of these people, I still admit an extraordinary sympathy with them.

I beg to be distinctly understood, that in the classification I have made I do not include another species of the genus speculator, which also figures conspicuously in the annals of the 'street.' Those I have just described are respectable. Those I am about to describe are not. There are, by the way, other speculators, whom it is unnecessary to notice in this connection, whose transactions are ordinary and commonplace. Among them is the real-estate operator, who spends his time in changing city property into country, and then back into city, rarely touching any money, but always getting an excellent trade! the dealer in wild lands; the individuals who speculate at auctions, and so so forth, and who are honest, well-meaning people in their way. The class I now refer to is the counterfeit of the first class. A counterfeit so admirably got up that it is sure to deceive on first inspection. The appearance and habits of both are alike, so also the associates and the associations. The man of this class affects the same transactions, and boards at the same hotels. He too visits London and Paris, and is mixed with various schemes and adventures, but there is one grand distinction between the two. The counterfeit has not a particle of honesty in his composition, and he never pays his debts. To be sure, he is full of talk about honor, and honorable men he himself, according to his own showing, is an honorable man. If any one presumes to doubt it, he shall insist on an explanation. I said, this sort of person never pays his debts. I am wrong, he does sometimes pay, but it is only when he thinks he can double his indebtedness in the same quarter by doing so. When he comes to town, he decides what hotel he will patronize, and generally manages to bring, or appear to bring, by arriving in their company, several respectable persons along with him, and thus, at the start, put the landlord under obligations to him. Once established, he calls on very expensive wines, and thus induces others to do the same. He frequently sends to the office for ten dollars, and tells the people to put it in the bill. He takes occasion to make a confident of the landlord. Invites him to his room, shows him thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of fresh, alluring, bright-looking certificates of stock in a dozen different companies about to be launched, and explains of course, apropos de rien, how it takes all one's spare cash to start so many valuable enterprises, any one of which, when started, is going to give him all he wants, and he confesses himself in consequence hard-up for ready money, and

really so interests the good-natured host that he feels it would be cruel to pester his guest with weekly bills, as is customary. In short, he makes up his mind, since it is sure to be paid in the end oh yes, for gentlemen always pay their hotel-bills- he can afford to wait on so good a fellow, who talks so ingenuously about his situation; besides, the landlord reasons, he really is of great advantage to the house, so let him stay. This man belongs to a set of what I term picturesque rascals, who never present a straight line or plane surface, but who deal always in the curvilinear; and so far as there are grace and elegance in curves, these fellows are essentially graceful, versatile, and what I call picturesque. What is wonderful, they make few enemies. When our friend thinks it time to leave the hotel, it is because his various enterprises take him elsewhere. These enterprises have not quite yet culminated, so he gives the landlord a note at ninety days, for the sum due; insists on leaving four times that amount, in good stocks, and quits the house as a gentleman should all right. In the same way he arranges with his tailor and his boot-maker. He manages so to put every one of these people under some species of obligation to him, through his zeal in recommending customers, or by doing them some little favor, that they can't for the life of them abuse him. Now if our gentleman was really a sanguine, enthusiastic man, who expected to succeed, and really hoped to pay one day, one could have some charity for him; but this is not so. He is a cool, calculating, adroit knave, his blood is cetaceous, not a warm impulse beats in his heart. He makes up his mind not only that the 'world owes him a living,' but it also owes him champagne, oyster-suppers, a fast horse, good dinners, the best Otard brandy, and Havana cigars; good seats at the opera and theatre, and so forth—a great deal being contained in that and so forth.' Since the world owes him these, he helps himself to them, and since the world is wide, and metropolitan cities large, with an ever-shifting population, he, with his nice discriminating qualities, collects his dues judiciously, and manages his various expedients as the Scotchman is said to get drunk soberly and with discretion.

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I AM about to touch on another topic. I was for a time undecided whether or not to carry it along with my narrative, but as it is intimately associated with my reverse of fortune, and as I desire this reverse and its consequences to be fully presented, I determine to do so. I refer to my religious feelings.

I have already mentioned that I was subject, to a considerable degree, to what I believed to be a kind of sentimental piety, springing from a desolate sense of my misfortunes and an instinctive desire to find a safe shelter from them. My good sense rejected all this as not genuine. So that I finally discarded it when it appeared, as a 1 ake-believe - a mock sentimentality born out of mere weakness under the pressure of surrounding troubles. After I had become established in my humble abode, and my mind was more calm, I began to reflect. The sacred lessons of my childhood were not lost on me; they now came up with full force. As I have already remarked, I was not what is called 'religious.' My wife was a member of the church, exemplary and good, if

mortal ever was. I myself was a believer in the truths of our holy religion. But I had never felt the need of its 'saving influence,' which clergymen tell us must be experienced in order to secure a change of heart. After I had become domesticated in our new abode, it seemed as if GoD was nearer to me than in the handsome house in Broadway. I frequently felt the desire to pray to HIM. But I repressed it. I could not escape from the conviction that it was a mockery to supplicate my MAKER now, when I had neglected to do so in the days of my prosperity. Yet I frequently felt in that little quiet home, shut out from the world and so forgotten by the world, a wish to commune with GoD, a desire to rise to the height of true piety-to be a good man. But, I say, I could not act on this. I dared not undertake it as a genuine performance. Place me suddenly back, with hundreds of thousands at my command, and what would become of the religious instinct? where would go those pious aspirations?

'WHEN the Devil was sick,
The Devil a monk would be;
When the Devil got well,
The devil a monk was he!'

I repeated frequently to myself as I asked the question.

You see, reader, I could not afford, poor as I was and almost starving, to become a hypocrite or even a self-deceiver. I did not dare to trifle with subjects which concerned the GREAT future. But I did feel that PROVIDENCE Would sooner or later work out in me His own purposes. There is nothing to compare with the grand Calvinistic doctrine of INDIVIDUALITY, which admits the idea that every human being is the direct and immediate subject of God's watchful regard. Working heroism out of the egotism of mortal man. In no such strong degree did I feel faith or courage. Yet I did believe out of these stormy trials I should by-and-by come purified as by fire. So I daily asked myself the question: If you were restored to wealth, how would you feel? what would you do?' And so long as I could not answer it, except to say I should become as I was in the former days, I knew I could not take credit for any change of feeling or purpose.

At length I began, as I thought, to gain fairer and clearer views of 'duty,' and to enjoy more of that calm spirit which is so comforting, when my acquaintance with Harley commenced. Its effect on these religious developments was unfriendly and chilling. The thoughts and emotions I was attempting to cultivate, and which were, as I was convinced, to afford me happiness and tranquillity, now gave place to feverish and disturbed ideas, until the former got to be distasteful. I asked myself why this change? Was there any thing about Harley, or what he proposed, which should in any way conflict with my sense of right and honesty; if not, why should I not yield to some of the pleasurable sensations which his presence always produced? Might it not, on the other hand, be possible that the feelings I was endeavoring to cherish were sombre, morbid, unnatural, not the result of a manly effort to do right, but developed, as I have hinted, by the depressing circumstances which encompassed me ?

I shall not here answer the question, but leave the reader to trace out the response to it as the narrative proceeds.

EMANCIPATION:

ITS INFLUENCE ON THE REBELLION AND EFFECT ON THE WHITES.

BY SINCLAIR TOUSEY.

The

We are in a rebellion, or insurrection of extraordinary magnitude. Common consent attributes it to the existence of Slavery. The cause being removed, the disease dies. The removal of a dam allows the free course of the stream. Remove the dam of Slavery from the broad river of the Union, and the pure waters of Freedom will speedily wash this foul scum of Rebellion into the great gulf of the Past. Slavery, however, is, in the opinion of many wellmeaning people, a constitutional disease, to be removed only by a remodelling of that instrument to suit the new condition of the political patient. honest scruples of these persons must be respected. Another large class assert that the disease is not constitutional, but in violation of that law of national life, and that all our political diseases arise from such violation. The opinions of these people are also entitled to attention, and however they may differ from the former on these matters, all agree that, had there been no Slavery in the South, there would have been no rebellious attempts to overthrow the Government and extend 'the institution.' This is the common platform on which all stand, one of its planks being a desire to end this rebellion and establish peace with honor to the Government and the people. So far so good.

Another plank in this political structure is the admission that Emancipation would end the rebellion at once and effectually. The first-named parties, that is to say, those who believe that the Constitution protects Slavery, are loth to adopt this course so long as there is any possibility of otherwise crushing the rebellion, but are willing to resort to this remedy if nothing else will cure the disease. I would willingly address a few words to this class. Many of the wisest and best men whom our country has ever produced, deny most emphatically that the Constitution protects or even recognizes Slavery, but for the present purpose let it be admitted that it does both recognize and protect that institution. Now, it is a principle of law, as well as of common-sense and common justice, that those who violate the law, do by such acts forfeit their right to enjoy the privileges the law guarantees to those who obey its provisions. Thus murderers, burglars, forgers, or any criminals who transgress the law, forfeit their rights under it, and are deprived of their liberties, or it may be of their lives, simply because they have done unpardonable violence to the law; and any attorney who should set up the plea that his murdering or thieving client was having his legal rights interfered with by the gallows or the prison, would naturally deserve and gain the contempt of the community. Violators of law forfeit their claims to the rights guaranteed to those who obey it. If such violators continued to enjoy the same privileges in

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