Next to him, that dandy, who is talking with a gentleman whose beard, though he is a judge of the Supreme Court, might grace the chin of a musketeer, is a wealthy banker's son. He is fresh from the State's prison; and, strange indeed, the magistrate he is speaking to, is the very one who sentenced him--perhaps, because of the pressure of public opinion, which must, after all, be taken into consideration. Our dandy, when his father retired, became sole manager of a banking house, and attempted to double, in a few weeks, the wealth his father had toiled thirty years to accumulate. Discarding legitimate speculation, he gambled at the Stock Exchange, which soon swallowed up the money and other deposits confided to his keeping. Then he became almost crazy. To keep up his credit with our banks and procure resources--and led astray by the hope of realizing profits large enough to make up his losses--he became a forger. He imitated the signatures of his correspondents, his own friends, in fact, of everybody in town; and, one morning, the people were startled in reading in the newspapers that forged notes, amounting to several millions of dollars, were flooding the street. The young man was sentenced to prison for a term of five years--one for each forged million! as remarked the wag who is now talking with him.' 'How is it he is out of prison?' 'That is precisely a point of American law which deserves a passing notice. Most of the State governors are vested with the pardoning power. When the exercise of such a prerogative devolves upon State legislatures, corrupting influences are less to be apprehended. A single individual may be coaxed to pardon by his political friends, or even bribed. But money, and political connections, are of little avail when one has to deal with one hundred legislators. In New York State, the legislature has no control over the pardoning power, which is vested exclusively in the governor. The family and friends of that youth represented his crime, stupendous as it was, as the first he had ever committed. Its enormity was represented as a proof of temporary insanity--the great argument, now-a-days, of our lawyers--and he was set free by the governor, after remaining a few months in prison. He shows himself again among the wealthy classes, and is as kindly received by them as he would have been had he never forged notes to the amount of several millions of dollars--so deeply-rooted in the American people is the feeling of tolerance, and especially when those who are the objects of it are millionaires, or in a fair way to become so.' * * * * *