He professed to study the law as a means of winning the favor of the goddess, and had a small backroom, up three flights of stairs, furnished with a table and two chairs, on which table several voluminous law-books very quietly reposed, being seldom forced to open their oracular jaws to give forth their sage opinions. This was his study. But the person who should expect to find him there, I am sorry to say, would have a fruitless visit, and drag up those steep stairs for nothing. He would be much more likely to meet him promenading Chestnut street, gallanting some beautiful young girl up and down its thronged _pavé_—or at the Art Union, with an eye upon the living beauties there congregated, not upon the pictures which adorn its walls. And yet I would not wish to convey an erroneous opinion, in thus hinting at the usual whereabouts of Mr. Gadsby. If he did not study, it was not for the want of talents or aptness; for he possessed a fine mind, and only needed some impetus to call forth those brilliant traits which were concealed beneath an exterior so vain and trifling—for vain he certainly was, and trifling I think I can prove beyond dispute. The fact is, being a general favorite with the ladies, he was inclined to push his advantage a little too far; or, in other words, Frank Gadsby was a coquet—a male coquet, of the first magnitude—insinuating, plausible, soft-voiced, and, in the words of Spencer, “When needed he could weep and pray, And when he listed he could fawn and flatter, Now smiling smoothly, like to summer’s day, Now glooming sadly so to cloke the matter.” But although, like the fickle zephyr, he wooed with light dalliance every fair flower of beauty which came across his path, he yet managed to retain his heart safe in his own lordly bosom, and Frank Gadsby, the charmer, alone possessed that love sworn to so many. Yet, as one cannot very well live without money, especially in the atmosphere which surrounded my hero, and as the law put little money in his purse, and the small annuity left him by some deceased relative almost as little, Mr. Gadsby resolved to make a rich match one of these days; no hurry—there was time enough—he had but to pick and choose—any lady would be proud to become Mrs. Frank Gadsby—and until stern necessity forced it upon him, he would wear no conjugal yoke! And, with this self-laudatory decision, he continued his flirtations. A conversation which passed between Mr. Gadsby and his friend Clarence Walton, will serve better than any thing I can vouch to substantiate the charge of trifling which I have preferred against him. This same charge Walton had been reiterating, but to which, with perfect nonchalance, Gadsby answered: