Who was Mr. Daniel Thacker? If you had been heir to an entailed estate, with as large a taste for pleasure and as limited resources as such heirs usually possess; if you had been an officer in either of the Guards regiments, or any of the crack _corps_; if you had been a member of any of the West-end government offices, with fast tendencies; or an author; or an actor frequenting fast society; or a theatrical manager; or a pretty _coryphée_ fond of suppers and admiration,--you would not have had to ask the question; for without doubt you would have possessed Mr. Thacker's acquaintance. A man combining the sharpest practice (in a gentlemanly way) as a bill-discounter with the keenest pursuit of pleasure of a strong, full-flavoured, not to say of a gross kind, was Mr. Thacker. A man who made cent per cent of his money by judicious investment, and who at the same time "parted" freely; living in capital chambers in St. James's Street, keeping horses and carriages, entertaining frequently and well, having an Opera-stall for himself and frequently an Opera-box for a female friend, visiting the theatres, riding to hounds, and carrying out every thing he attempted in very excellent style. Life seemed a broad and pleasantly-turfed path for Mr. Daniel Thacker, down which he could stroll in his easy polished boots without the smallest stumbling-block to cause him annoyance. But there was one thing which wrung and chafed him, which he could never shut out from his happiest hour, which proclaimed itself whenever he looked in the glass (which was not seldom), which lay like a hideous pitfall for Mr. Thacker's friends, into which they were perpetually tumbling and coming out covered with inarticulate excuses, which pointed the sarcasm of little boys in the streets at first overwhelmed by his splendour, and edged the repartee of insolent cabmen, to whom he called to clear the way for his high-stepping steeds,--a fact which nothing could hide, a brand which no money could obliterate;--Mr. Daniel Thacker was an unmistakable Jew. Unmistakable! as unmistakable as if he had retained his old family name of Hart; as if he had remained in his old family neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe; as if he had continued his old family occupation of contracting with the government for the supply of rum and lemons for the navy, and uniforms for the postmen. In that choice neighbourhood, and out of those apparently not very meaty contracts, had old Simeon Hart, Daniel's uncle, made all the wealth which he bequeathed to his nephew; and when, long before the old gentleman's decease, the young man's aspirations led him to declare to his senior that he thought the Hebraic name stood in their way in certain matters of business, and that he had some idea of taking some less-recognisable cognomen,--the old gentleman remarked, not without a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "Do ath you like, Daniel, ma tear; do ath you like. You're a threwd lad, and are thure to turn