The letters I saw all seemed to be written in the same rapid, half-clerkly, half-lawyerlike, but elegant scrawl, whether written to a Perkins or a King. It will be seen that the third partner--"J. Perkins Graham"--could represent both the Graham and the Perkins family, and I suppose he did. So there were in the scheme four families to be preyed upon,--Lord, King, Graham, and Perkins; and these families are numerous over the land, and many of them in high positions. I learned from the scamps, after their detection, that they received all sorts of epistles, from the lowly Lord up to the exalted one, who wrote on paper displaying flaming coats of arms, and their letters bearing a huge seal. So with the rest of the families. The swindlers had spent some time in hunting through all the directories of other cities and towns which they could find in New York, and gathered all they could from advertisements in newspapers for a year or so, before they launched out in their long-meditated scheme. Meanwhile they were practising their cunning arts in other swindles. They also wrote to the postmasters of a large number of towns, enclosing to one a letter for a King, to another a letter for a Perkins, to still another a letter for a Graham, asking each postmaster to have the kindness to "read the accompanying letter," and to pass it over to any King, Perkins, and so on, who might be within the delivery of his office, or in his vicinity. These letters they got copied by a clerk at a few cents (five, I think) apiece. So when they got a dollar back it paid for about twelve letters, inclusive of stationery and postage. A hundred letters and the postage would cost them about twelve dollars, and from a hundred they would probably get fifty, if not more, favorable answers. From several thousand letters they received several thousand dollars, aside from large sums which, by subsequent correspondence, they swindled out of such pompous, or other parties, as, judging by their letters, they thought they could further entrap. Some of these forwarding to the famous firm of Lord, King, & Graham as high as a hundred dollars to be guaranteed _especial_ effort in their behalf! It is almost too preposterous to be believed, but such was the fact--such the credulity of some who occupied political positions of note; one of them, indeed, being at the time a member of Congress! But credulity in matters of this kind is a weakness, alike of the poor and the rich, the educated and uneducated. The device of these swindlers proved to be more profitable than one would have, on first thought, judged possible, so much greater is human credulity than we are wont to consider it. Perhaps credulity is the only thing in the world that we are not apt to overrate. But it is not strange that it should be great touching material things, when in matters of religion the most absurd fancies have, from time immemorial, down through the ages of Oriental, pagan, and other religions to the days of