I'll tell you how it came about.
At that time I used to know a podgy, wealthy, bald little man having chambers in the Albany; a financier too, in his way, carrying out transactions of an intimate nature and of no moral character; mostly with young men of birth and expectations--though I dare say he didn't withhold his ministrations from elderly plebeians either.

He was a true democrat; he would have done business (a sharp kind of business) with the devil himself.

Everything was fly that came into his web.

He received the applicants in an alert, jovial fashion which was quite surprising.

It gave relief without giving too much confidence, which was just as well perhaps.