The United States Government sought Mr. Sidney’s services, as appears of record.  Those high in authority had decided on his employment, a fact which in less than six hours thereafter was known to the directors, and within that space of time five of them had arrived in Washington and paid over to their attorney the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars for some purpose,—­the attorney being no less a personage than an honorable member of a supreme court.  The service desired of Mr. Sidney he was willing to perform, on the condition that he should not be called upon to prosecute any other parties than those to whose conviction he had sworn to devote his life.

As a detective, Mr. Sidney was unequalled in this country.  Vidocq may have been his superior in dissimulation, but in that alone.  He certainly had not a tithe of Mr. Sidney’s genius and strength of mind and moral power to discern the truth, though never so deeply hidden, and to expose it to the clear light of day.

  “His blood and judgment were so well commingled,”

that his conclusions seemed akin to prophecy.

But it is not as a detective that Mr. Sidney is here presented.  This slight sketch of this remarkable man is given, that the reader may more willingly believe that he possessed, among other wonderful powers, one that is not known ever to have been attained to such a degree by any other individual, namely:—­

The power of discerning, in a single specimen of handwriting, the character, the occupation, the habits, the temperament, the health, the age, the sex, the size, the nationality, the benevolence or the penuriousness, the boldness or the timidity, the morality or the immorality, the affectation or the hypocrisy, and often the intention of the writer.

At the age of thirty-five, the genius of Mr. Sidney as a physiognomist, expert, and detective, remained wholly undeveloped.  He was not aware, nor were his friends, of his wonderful powers of observation, dissection, and deduction.  Nor had he taken his first lesson by being brought in contact with the rogues.  How, then, did he acquire this almost miraculous power?

After he had ascertained the names of the directors and State agents of the band, he collected many hundred specimens of their handwriting.  These he studied with that energy which was equalled only by his patience.  In a surprisingly short time he first of all began to perceive the differences between a moral and an immoral signature.  Afterwards he proceeded to study the occupation, age, habits, temperament, and all the other characteristics of the writers, and in this he was equally successful.  If this be doubted by any, let him collect a number of signatures of Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, and Americans, or, what is still better, of Jews of all nations, and at least in the latter instance, with ordinary perceptive faculties, there will be no difficulty in determining the question of nationality; a person with half an eye need never mistake the handwriting of a Jew.  Many can detect pride and affectation, and most persons the sex, in handwriting, how much soever it may be disguised.