Jack Rivers should have been a gentleman. His family, his property, his early education, entitled him to that dignity. Jack was not a gentleman; with perverted views of ambition he spurned the distinction, and gloried in the well-merited title of knave. Many loftier and nobler minds have been reduced to even a lower point of moral degradation by early indulgence in gross licentious habits. Such was not the case with Jack. Immoderate sensual gratification ranked not in the catalogue of his crimes. He was no toper; was a married man at twenty, and a faithful husband all his life. Yet, Jack was an acknowledged, nay, more, a professed knave, though neither a lover of money nor a spendthrift. Shakspeare it is said, ransacked all nature, and left almost no character untouched; yet neither in his historical portraits, the etchings of his own times, nor his prophetic creations, has he given us a picture that at all resembled _Snap Rivers_, the faithfully expressive soubriquet assumed by our hero. Nature, whimsical nature, must have been in her drollest mood--must have been actually studying _the picturesque_ when she cast his nativity. He certainly was a model for an artist in that line, for he stood six feet six inches by military standard, was extremely slender, rejoiced in the possession of a hatchet face ornamented with the most splendid Roman nose imaginable, illumined by two small ferret eyes, squinting fiercely inwards, which gave to his countenance the most sinister expression possible. Quite aware of the value of these natural advantages, Jack’s genius and striking taste in dress added considerably to their effect. It was his invariable custom through life to wrap his outer man in a long blue cloak, a garment little used in his day. Summer and winter, a pair of blue rib-and-fur woollen stockings encased his spindle legs, gartered above the knee beneath a pair of gun-mouthed unmentionables; a red nightcap ever maintained its conspicuous place on his elevated poll, while an immense fire-shovel or clerical hat gave a finish to his unique and matchless appearance. He possessed one other accomplishment: he was afflicted--poh!--blessed with a most inveterate stammer in his speech: a word in speaking he could not utter without the most frightful contortion of countenance, and unintelligible splutter, splutter, splutter. Yet, no one of his attributes did he turn to such beneficial effect as this; for when he either wished to gain time, or baffle an opponent, forth came a torrent of manting sounds in all their horrific grandeur, and he who could quell the feelings of pity could rarely resist the ready propensity to laugh at the ludicrous exhibition; so Jack was generally successful. But, notwithstanding this great natural defect, whenever he pleased he could make himself well understood, by falling back upon a species of recitative, or musical method of speaking, peculiar to himself, and always commencing with a loud “ho! ho!” which