New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-11-25
4 RE1DYM1DE NOVEL.

| Balzac used to say that the records of the
courts and the police never produced q real
story with beginning, middle, and end, and
one of the happiest of Leon GOzlan's sketches
is a description of a dinner at which Vldocq
refuted the great romancer's statement by
| giving q most ingenious "reminiscences from
his own experience of absorbing interest and
startling catastrophe. The Surrogate's Court
has for the last few days been airording an
| additional contradiction to the prejudiced
dictum of the author of the Human Comedy"
No play of our time has been so full of all
the elements of dramatic interest as the trial
on the application of the lady calling her
self the widow of George Hardin for letters
of administration on his estate.
Hardin was one of those shrewd, furtively
discreet, industrious men from the North Of
Ireland who have SO many representatives in
our high financial and commercial world. He
came to this country young, and went into
business as an importer of Irish linens, making
comfortable fortune, which, after retiring
from that pursuit, he greatly increased by jul
dicious dealings in commercial paper. He
formed some sort of connection with Mrs.
Walker about twenty-five years ago, and
assuming her name went TO live with
her in q modest house in COrnelia-st. For
quarter of century, more or less, he led
this double life, known to his business
acquaintance as thrifty merchant and
Spectator under the name of Hardin,
and to bis neighbors in Cornelia-st.
as quiet and unpretending citizen
who was called George Walker. He pros
pered, as these secretive men often do, and
accumulated great estate. But it apparently
never occurred to HIM that he was mortal, or
that anything needed to be done for George
Walkers widow in case George Hardin died.
This event came without waiting for him. and
Mrs. Walker applied for letters of administra
ton upon S2,000,000 Of personal property.
These were granted by the Surrogate, but at
this moment counter claim was interposed
by the nephews of the deceased from Belfast.
who alleged that Mrs. Walker was not the
wife of their uncle. Some picturesque and
disagreeable stories of her early life were
brought forward, and it was intimated that
her husband, the genuine Walker, was
still living. But this charge was abb
ruptly and neatly extinguished by the
evidence of trustworthy friend named
Ballagh, who testified, with pleasing detail
cold in clay on bench near Frenchs Hotel
having died from protracted revels, and that
he had seen him carted away in the pauper's
hearse. The widows cause was further sus-
tanned by the strong and consistent evidence
of the family physician, who testified that the
relations of the Walkers were those of hus
band and wife, and that their marriage had
been frequently spoken of by both of them.
| But the case last Saturday took on a far
more dramatic aspect than ever. The counsel
| for the Irish nephews brought in on that day
| a shabby scarecrOw from the almshouse at
| Blackwell's Island whom they called Robert
| Walker, the husband of George Hardn's
| widow. He was old enough and ignoble
enough to fill most creditably the questionable
post assigned to him in the story, and he
gave his testimony in manner which prom
ises to prove fatal If it is not impeached. 1t
| runs through the usual story of rum and ruin,
auarreling and desertion, and at last
| mere wreck and oblivion. The explanation
of Mr.. Ballagh's story is quite like
the denouement of the cheaper kinds
of drama, where the causes which produced
the trouble in the first act are reduced to the
simplest elements just before the curtain'falls.
Robert was not dead, but very drunk, when
he lay on the bench by Frenclfs Hotel, and
| the lugubriOus vehicle which carried him
away was not hearse but one of those con-
veyanCes whose true name we gently avoid in