in which he was taught, in order to determine if there were in him the
elements of success.

Chiefest among the essential qualities is to be named his astonishing
strength of nerve. No danger could agitate him, however imminent or
sudden. No power could deprive him of his imperturbable coolness
and courage. Perils seemed to render his mind more clear and his
self-reliance more firm. (And yet I have heard him say, that there
was among the band of criminals before mentioned one woman of greater
strength of mind and nervous power than any person he had ever seen,
whom alone of all created beings, whether man or devil, he dreaded
to encounter.) Had not Mr. Sidney been thus potently armed, he must,
without doubt or question, have become almost a monomaniac; for,
secondly, he was for years enraged almost to madness that his entire
estate had been swept from his grasp, as he believed, by the torch of
the incendiary; and he was to the last degree exasperated, and with
a just indignation, that the merchant-princes who he supposed had
occasioned his impoverishment yet walked abroad with the confidence of
the community, and were still trusted by many a good man as the very
salt of the city. Nevertheless, Mr. Sidney, solitary and alone, had
arraigned them before a criminal tribunal. He was therefore driven to
his own resources, and there was no place in his nature, or in the
nature of things, for the first retrograde step. All his vast energies
were thenceforth consecrated to, and concentrated in, the detection of
crime. And from the time that he was refused payment for his loss, so
far as my observation extended, he seemed to have been governed by no
other purpose in life than the extermination of that great gang of
robbers which he subsequently discovered. Add to these incentives
and capacities his extraordinary perceptive faculties and power of
analytical observation, together with his wonderful patience, and it