Descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, I found darker and deeper themes forspeculation

I descended to details, andregarded with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, andexpression of countenance.

He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them

inequalities of power between otherwise unrelated bodies

a sea in the middle of the sea

Structuring and ideQ.tifying the eO:vironment is a vital ability among all mobile animals.

They,insinuate themselves into his confidence and friendship."

Samson giving up his locks,"2

to a poison, a disease, a source of contamination and corruption. The impressions made by wicked companions were "like poison, taken into the physical system, and will be sure, sooner or later, to reveal its bitter results."

Although the term confidence man does not appear in the advice manuals, it accurately identifies the villain of the piece. The seducer-whether rake or pimp, gambler or, thief-begins his as-sault on the innocent youth by winning his confidence through an offer of friendship and entertainment. In the classic antebellum tale of seduction, he then leads the youth into a gorgeous theater-the seducer's natural habitat, for he himself is a skilled actor. He takes him to a fashionable club where he coaxes his prey into accepting his fatal first drink and gradually draws him into a card game. Finally, he lures his victim to a brothel where, if the theater and the alcohol and the gambling have failed to win him to a life of vice, illicit sexuality succeeds. The youth's character has been destroyed, step by fatal step, because he has been tricked into offering his confidence to a man without principle, a man whose art it'is to deceive others through false appearances.