exclaimed a shrewd man, some thirty years
ago.

The person who spoke was Antoine Vaudore. For six months he secretly
nursed the idea, studying it, examining it in all respects, weighing its
advantages and disadvantages, and at last he decided that it was a good
one. That same year, indeed, assisted by a little capital which he
had obtained no one knew how, he created a new, strange, and untried
profession to supply a new demand.

Thus Vaudore was the first man who made heir-hunting a profession.
As will be generally admitted, it is not a profession that can be
successfully followed by a craven. It requires the exercise of unusual
shrewdness, untiring activity, extraordinary energy and courage, as
well as great tact and varied knowledge. The man who would follow it
successfully must possess the boldness of a gambler, the sang-froid of a
duelist, the keen perceptive powers and patience of a detective, and the
resources and quick wit of the shrewdest attorney.

It is easier to decry the profession than to exercise it. To begin with,
the heir-hunter must be posted up with information respecting unclaimed
inheritances, and he must have sufficient acquaintance with the legal
world to be able to obtain information from the clerks of the different
courts, notaries, and so on. When he learns that a man has died without
any known heirs, his first care is to ascertain the amount of unclaimed
property, to see if it will pay him to take up the case. If he finds
that the inheritance is a valuable one, he begins operations without
delay. He must first ascertain the deceased's full name and age. It is
easy to procure this information; but it is more difficult to discover
the name of the place where the deceased was born, his profession,
what countries he lived in, his tastes and mode of life--in a word,
everything that constitutes a complete biography.

However, when he has armed himself with the more indispensable facts,
our agent opens the campaign with extreme prudence, for it would be
ruinous to awake suspicion. It is curious to observe the incomparable
address which the agent displays in his efforts to learn the particulars
of the deceased's life, by consulting his friends, his enemies, his
debtors, and all who ever knew him, until at last some one is found who
says: "Such and such a man--why, he came from our part of the country.
I never knew HIM, but I am acquainted with one of his brothers--with one
of his uncles--or with o