The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1880-10-23
TIE PACIFIC
Commercial A0bert1ser
SATURDAY, OCTOBER %, 1880.
THE MARCH ASSIZE.
BY sAMUEL WARREN, AUTHOR OF TEN THOU
SAND A YEAR" ETC.

Something more than half a century ago,
a person in going along Holborn might have
seen, near the corner of one of the thorough
fares which diverge towards Russell square,
the respectable. looking shop of a glover and
haberdasher named James Harvey, a man
generally esteemed by his neighbOrs, and
who was usually considered well to do in
the world. Like many London tradesmen,
Harvey was originally from the country.
He had come up TO town when a poor lad to
push his fortune, and by dint of steadiness
and civility, and a small property left him by
a distant relation, he had been able to get
into business on his own account, and to at
tain that most important element of success
in London--"a connection" Shortly after
setting up in the world, he married a young
woman from his native town, to whom he
had been engaged ever since his school days;
and at the time our narrative commences he
was the father of three children.
James Harvev's establishment was one of
the best freQuented of It's class In the street.
You could never pass without seeing Gus
toners going in or out. There was evidently
not a little business going forward. But
although, to all appearances, a tiourlshlng
concern; the proprietor of the establishment
was surprised ID find that he was continually
pinched in his circumstances No matter
what was the amount of business transacted
over the counter, he never got any richer.
At the period referred to shop-keeping
had not attained that degree of organization
with respect to counter men and cashiers
which now distinguishes the great houses of
trade. The primitive till was not yet SUI
perseded. This was the weak point In
Harvey's arrangements; and, not to make a
needless number of words about it, the poor
man was regularly robbed by a shop-man,
whose dexterity in pitching a guinea into
the drawer so as to make it jump unseen
with a jerk into his hand, was worthy of
Herr DObler, or any other master of the
sublime art of Jugglery.
Good-natured and unsuspicious, perhaps
also not sufficiently vigilant, Harvey was
pillaged. Cartwright, the name OF the person
who was preying on his employer, was not
a young man. He was between forty and
fifty years of age, and had been in various
situations, where he had always given salts
faction, except on the score of being some
what irritable. Privately, he was a man of
loose habits, and for years his extravagances
had been paid for by property clandestinely
distracted from his too-confiding master.
Slow to believe in the reality of such wick
edness, Mr.. Harvey could, with difficulty,
entertained the suspicious which began to
draw on his mind. At length all doubt was
at an end. He detected Cartwright in the
very act of carrying off goods to a considera-
bic amount. The man was tried at the Old
Bailey for the %offense, but through a technic-
al informality in the indictment, he was
acquitted.
Unable to find employment, and with a
character gone, the liberated thief became
savage, ~revengeful and desperate. Instead of
imputing his failure to his own Irregularities,
he considered his late unfortunate employer
as the cause of his ruin; and now he bent all
the energies of his dark nature to destroy the
reputation of the man whom he had betray-
ed and plundered. OF all the beings self
delivered to the rule of INSCRIPTIONS ma
Lightly, with whom it has become my fate to
come professionally in contact, | never knew
one so utterly fendish as this discounted
%pilferer. Frenzied with his imaginary
wrongs, he formed the determination to
labor, even if it were for years, to ruin his
victim. Nothing short of death should
divert him from this the darling object of his
existence.
Animated by these diabolical passions,
Cartwright proceeded to his work, Harvey,
he had too good reason to know, was in
debt to persons who had made him advances;
and by means of artfully concocted anony-
nous letters, evidently written by some one
conversant with the matters on which he
wrote, he succeeded in alarming the haber-
dasher's creditors. The consequences were
demands of immediate payment, and, in
spite of the debtors explanations and pro-
misses, writs, heavy law expenses, ~ruinous
sacrifices and ultimate bankruptcy. 1t may
seem almost too marvellous for belief, but
the story of this terrible revenge, and its
consequence is no fiction. Every incident
in my narrative is true, and the whole may
be found in hard outline in the records of the
courts with which a few years ago | was fam
liar,
The Inundated and distressed feelings of
Harvey and his family may be left to the
imagination. When he found himself a
ruined man, | dare say his mental sufferings
were sufficiently acute. Yet he did not SIT
down in despair, To re-establish himself in
business in England appeared hopeless /; but
America presented itself as a scene where
industry might find a reward; and by the
kindness of ONE friends, he was enabled to
preparations to emigrate with his wife and
children.
Towards the end of February he quilted
London for one OF the great seaports, where
he was to embark for Boston. On arriving
there with his family, Mr.. Harvey took up
his abode at a principal hotel. This, in a
man of straitened means, was doubtless i'm
prudent; but he afterwards attempted TO ex-
plain, the circumstance by saying, that as
the ship in which he had engaged his pas
sage was to sail on the day after his arrival.
he had preferred mourning a slight additional
expense rather than that his wife-who was
now, with failing spirits, nursing an infant
should be exposed to coarse associations and
personal discomfort. In the expectation,
however, of being one night in the hotel,
Harvey was unfortunately disappointed.
Shipmasters, especially those commanding
emigrant vessels, were then, as now, habi-
tual promise-breakers, and, although each
succeeding sun was to light them on their
way, it was fully a fortnight before the ship
out to sea. BY that time a second
and more dire reverse had occurred in the
of the luckless Harvey.
Cartwright, whose appetite for vengeance
was huf whetfed hv his fret S,oooce baJ