I will just give you a hint of my business by letter, that you may be the more readily induced to permit me to explain matters fully in my proper person.

You are a savage, a coppercolored savage-Good. You are tall and slender, with black eyes and long coarse black hair-Good. You have high cheek bones-Very good. You, without doubt, wear jewels in your nose, and have split and distended the lobes of your ears— Excellent, most excellent! I would rather possess the advantages just enumerated than be emperor of the Gauls. Only make the proper use of the directions I shall give you, and you will have the wealth of this populous city at command. But it is to be remembered that if you adopt my plan, one half of the profits-you comprehend-one half of the profits must be appropriated to the use of the original genius who invented. the scheme.

But, before I unfold my plan, permit me to express my astonishment at your conduct. You appear to have some odd kind of intelligence; and you inform us that you are fifty years of age; what then, in the name of common sense, do you mean by preaching musty sermons on morals, and prating about virtue and honor, and the like? If you be a fool at fifty years of age, you will be a fool as long as you live, and longer too. But I suppose you are a deep one. You mean to amuse us awhile with your fair speeches, and then make a bold stroke at our pockets. If such be your intention, here is my hand-you will find me a useful associate in any scheme of honorable roguery you may have in contemplation. For, (do you mark?) I have too much principle to engage in any dishonest practices that might endanger my neck; but I am the very lad that can impose upon the world in a genteel way, you understand me? The world is overspread with fools; who appear to me like a vast field of grain ready for the sickle. Men of genius have nothing to do but to enter in and reap. The task is not difficult; we have only to study their weaknesses, follies, passions, and prejudices, and improve them to our own advantage. Every man may be gulled some way or other. If he will not bite at a minnow, he may at a

worm. Labor omnia vincit improbus: that is my motto; and, let me tell you, I am seldom unsuccessful in my undertakings. But the scheme I am about to propose is liable to no risk. It is an ingenious advantage taken of a universal weakness; and cannot miscarry.

Let us come to the point. You shall set up for a physician, and inform the public, in a pompous advertisement in all the daily papers, that you studied physic many years under the celebrated Kaioka; that you are perfectly well acquainted with the secrets of nature; that you have a profound knowledge of all the simples in the vegetable kingdom; that you spent many years in collecting, with your own hands, an immense multitude of plants in the Appalachian mountains; that you have dried them with sedulous care, or extracted their virtues and preserved their essences as inestimable remedies for all the diseases to which the human frame is subject; that you are instructed in all the occult sciences and supernatural learning of the ever memorable Kaioka; that you are a perfect master of every species of powwowing; that you can ease the aking of a tooth, and charm away the "grief of wound;" that you are profoundly skilled in venereal complaints, and can afford immediate relief without the assistance of mercury; that you have paid particular attention to the nature of female complaints, and have suitable remedies for all their indispositions-adding, that your secrecy and honor may be depended on; that you have devoted much of your time to the consideration of those diseases that result from dissipated pleasures, immoderate use of spirituous liquors, residence in climates unfavorable to the constitution, and juvenile indiscretions, and you feel yourself happy in announcing to the afflicted that you are able to renovate their constitutions and restore their pristine health and vigor; that you are possessed of certain arcana that are absolutely unknown to civilized nations, which will enable you to perform cures that will astonish the world; that you have supernatural cordials, balms, and restoratives, without number; that you have hypersupercarbonated waterproof liquid blacking for boots and shoes, deathdealing poison for rats and mice,

imperial unguents for the itch, and worm-murdering lozenges for children; that you have specifics for every disease, and salves for every sore; that you have tinctures and lovepowders, eyewaters and cornplasters; that you have cosmetics of supereminent efficacy, celestial perfumes and milk of the roses of Paradise; that you have a beautifying lotion, invented by the princess Onasycōcōquahānamahāla, which will remove pimples and freckles, and scars, and make the skin white and smooth and soft as the downy feathers on an angel's wing; that you have a tincture of amaranthine flowers that bloomed in the gardens of the lovely Osyona, which being used daily will preserve beauty to the latest period of life, and even give to wrinkled age the appearance of youth.

When you have enumerated these things and a hundred others, you may conclude your advertisement with observing that, from many years extensive and successful practice in the capital of the Muscogulgees, you flatter yourself that you can more than give satisfaction to those who may apply for your assistance.

After this advertisement has been some time in circulation, you must publish a list of your soul-relieving, body-restoring and world-astonishing medicines. You must invent new and unheard of titles for your nostrums, and express yourself on all occasions in the most bombastic and unintelligible manner. You must declaim rotundo ore, and tear every subject to tatters that falls in your power. You must outpuff the puffers of this puffing people, and strike dumb the altiloquence of the immortal vendor of the barbal alkahest, and diamond paste by the terrisonous explosion of your altisonant and ceraunic magniloquy!

You have only to show your olive phiz, utter some Muscogulgee gibberish and heathen Greek jawbreakers, and, by the god of knaves, the whole practice of the city is your own. Who could withstand such soft majestic words, pouring from your sweet old ugly coppercolored mouth, with a damned crowbar run through your nose, a new moon on your breast, and great silver pendants dangling from your ears? Money, my dear Piomingo,

money will pour in upon you, as the waters pour upon the earth, when the windows of heaven are opened. When life is in danger, men draw forth their reluctant dollars.

This is the flood of fortune. Can you hesitate? You cannot, certainly, doubt of your abilities to impose upon the world. In fact, there is nothing necessary but a sufficiency of impudence.

When you are called to visit a patient, you have only to feel his pulse, bid him thrust out his tongue, and then, laying your forefinger by the side of your nose, pretend to meditate for some time. There is no necessity that you should pay the smallest attention to the sufferer during the few minutes that you stay in the room. You may strut about, look at the curtains, pictures, &c. and examine your own lovely person in a mirror: a physician, having been long conversant with sickness, sorrow, groans, and death, it is not expected that he should discover any symptoms of humanity. When any questions are asked by the relatives of the patient, you must remember to give ambiguous oracular responses: : thus your credit will be preserved let the case terminate as it may. Should any one demand to be informed of the nature of the disease, you must look learned, mutter something about the cerebrum and cerebellum, cardia and pericardium, obstructed perspiration and the peristaltic motion: the inquirer will be, not only satisfied, but highly pleased that you considered him capable of understanding your discourse. You must talk much of the number of your patients, of the necessity of attending a consultation, and hurry away, leaving "Kaioka's pills" or a "tincture of life everlasting."

Should the sufferer recover, that recovery will be attributed to the efficacy of your vegetable specific; should he die, you may lay the blame on the carelessness of the attendants in not administering properly your inestimable medicine, or on the obstinacy of the patient in refusing to regulate his conduct by your directions; and, after his death, you must remember frequently to make some such observation as the following: "Had Mr. F

Weakly taken my preparation as directed, he would have been a living man at this day."

Your savage appearance, your outlandish speech, and your consummate impudence, will insure the success of our scheme. Men are always credulous; but when the body is debilitated and the mind enfeebled by long continued sickness, there is nothing they may not be induced to believe. A bold impostor may rule them with absolute authority, and, by raising and depressing their spirits as circumstances may require, draw the last cent from their pockets. He must make them feel diseases that never existed, and then administer cures for the complaints of his own creation. He must "speak peace" to the dying, when " there is no peace;" and terrify these who are like to live with imaginary dangers.

Here is a wide field for the exertions of a man of genius, who studies his own interest and pursues steadily the means that are necessary for the accomplishment of his purposes. But he must not be disturbed by any foolish qualms of conscience, or childish sympathizing sensations. No: his heart must be stone; his hand, iron; and his face, brass.

How unlucky it was that I should not have been born black, or red, or even yellow. Had I the color of an African, a Hindoo, an Arabian, or a Cherokee, I could carry my plans into operation without the assistance of another; but as it is, I am under the necessity of procuring some one to execute that which I am fully capable of projecting. This head, Piomingo, this head of mine, is invaluable. O what great schemes have perished in embryo, for want of hands to embody those sublime ideas which have originated in my brain!

I once endeavoured to educate and instruct a great flatfooted knockkneed humpbacked blubberlipped splaymouthed woolly headed negro in the art and mystery of quackery. His person was exactly the thing I wished; and he was uncommonly shrewd, and as impudent as the devil. I meant to have introduced him to the world as a physician from Angola. He appeared well contented to be called doctor Quassia, and to have money