This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.

Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, “Jim Robinson,” “a little man, stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,”—­and how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub into a still more disgusting butterfly!

“I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged, patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters’ House.”

Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.

“Presently Sizzum appeared.  He had taken time to tone down the pioneer and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had made of himself.  He was clean shaved:  clean shaving is a favorite coxcombry of the deacon class.  His long black hair, growing rank from a muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears.  A large white blossom of cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black dress-coat, creased with its recent packing.  Except that his pantaloons were thrust into boots with the maker’s name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.) stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct go-to-meetin’ costume,—­a Chadband of the Plains.”

When you see one of these men, you will know him again.  Winthrop has sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of Dickens’s, and they will bear his mark forever:  T.W. fecit.

As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or Mrs. Poyser.

“‘Hillo, Shamberlain!’ hailed Brent, riding up to the train.

“‘Howdydo?  Howdydo?  No swap!’ responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.  ’Bung my eyes, ef you’re not the mate of all mates I’m glad to see!  Pax vobiscrum, my filly!  You look as fresh as an Aperel shad.  Praised be the Lord,’ continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, ’who has sent thee again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!’”

Or Jake’s droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet Brigham.

“‘It’s olluz so,’ says Jake; ’Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the increase.  Not that Bridger’s like Paul, any more ’n we’re like Apollyon; but we’re goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.’”

Or, again, Jake’s compliments to “Armstrong of Oregon,” that galloping Vigilant Committee of one.