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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 amusing mixture of strut, humility, roguery
and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing- room, and
you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost considered part of
the family. You know he has been living in the house at Templeton,
ever since he was installed by Mr. John Effingham. It was there I had
the honour first to meet him,"
"First!--Surely you have never seen him any where else!"
"Your pardon, my dear. He never comes to town without honouring me
with a call. This is the price I pay for having had the honour of being an
inmate of the same house with him for a week."
Eve rang the bell, and Pierre made his appearance.
"Desire Mr. Bragg to walk into the library."
Grace looked demure while Pierre was gone to usher in their visiter,
and Eve was thinking of the medley of qualities John Effingham had
assembled in his description, as the door opened, and the subject of her
contemplation entered.
"_Monsieur Aristabule_" said Pierre, eyeing the card, but sticking at
the first name.

Mr. Aristabulus Bragg was advancing with an easy assurance to make
his bow to the ladies, when the more finished air and quiet dignity of
Miss Effingham, who was standing, so far disconcerted him, as
completely to upset his self-possession. As Grace had expressed it, in
consequence of having lived three years in the old residence at
Templeton, he had begun to consider himself a part of the family, and
at home he never spoke of the young lady without calling her "Eve," or
"Eve Effingham." But he found it a very different thing to affect
familiarity among his associates, and to practise it in the very face of its
subject; and, although seldom at a loss for words of some sort or
another, he was now actually dumb-founded. Eve relieved his
awkwardness by directing Pierre, with her eye, to hand a chair, and first
speaking.
"I regret that my father is not in," she said, by way of turning the visit
from herself; "but he is to be expected every moment. Are you lately
from Templeton?"
Aristabulus drew his breath, and recovered enough of his ordinary tone
of manner to reply with a decent regard to his character for
self-command. The intimacy that he had intended to establish on the
spot, was temporarily defeated, it is true, and without his exactly
knowing how it had been effected; for it was merely the steadiness of
the young lady, blended as it was with a polished reserve, that had
thrown him to a distance he could not explain. He felt immediately, and
with taste that did his sagacity credit, that his footing in this quarter was
only to be obtained by unusually slow and cautious means. Still, Mr.
Bragg was a man of great decision, and, in his way, of very far-sighted
views; and, singular as it may seem, at that unpropitious moment, he
mentally determined that, at no very distant day, he would make Miss
Eve Effingham his wife.
"I hope Mr. Effingham enjoys good health," he said, with some such
caution as a rebuked school-girl enters on the recitation of her task--"he
enjoyed bad health I hear, (Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, though so shrewd,
was far from critical in his modes of speech) when he went to Europe,
and after travelling so far in such bad company, it would be no more

than fair that he should have a little