The San Francisco call., 1896-06-09

tion to maintain yourself it might be doing a
good act, ii my client was not under any obli-
cation to you, as he always told me he was
not.
After that paper was drawn up in my Office
and you told me about your connection with
Lucky Baldwin it attracted my further
sympathy for you. / told Baldwin what you
had said. He heard me all through. He then
told me it was all a lie from beginning to end,
and he said your letters to him would show to
anybody that he had never been intimate
with you. He told me that the first he ever
knew of you you wrote him some two or three
years befor he ever saw you. You wrote him
about horses. He answered your letter, think
ing that you might be some one who
was infatuated with horses, or half crank.
He received many letters from you in and
about the same strain that he never answered.
Finally he had business in Boston at the time
you s.-iu he called on you at Thompsons in
Winchester. He went there merely out OF Gu
riOsity. He that the Thompsons were
nice people. They treated him kindly. he
gave them an invitation to call upon him
when they came TO California, ana you LED him
! to believe that they were coming to California
and that you were coming with them.
You led him to believe that you were
an adopted daughter of theirs, and
when you did appear in California and
came to his hotel he treated you kindly on
account of the Thompsons but he soon saw
mat there was something wrong. You tried to
solicit him; you held ouIinducements TO him
you begged OF him to give your brother situ-
alton, in other words, you did everything that
your VIII prompted you 10 90 10 get MIN IN
your possession. Even when he left to go TO
Pasadena after the train had got out a few
miles he was surprised TO see you upon the
train. You said you thought so much of him
that you wanted to be near him, wanted to go
with him. And your story and his does not
agree because he says he only remained over
night at Pasadena, returning to Los Angeles the
next day.
Now, Miss Ashley, 1 have seen all your let
ters, or many of them, to him. Long before
you ever knew him you wrote to him about
your "dear Uncle Balch;' you called him
''your dear Uncle Balch". When you met Mr..
Baldwin in California you referred time and
time again to your "dear Uncle Balch," and
you said that it was sad he took his own life.
In many OF your letters TO Mr.. Baldwin you
said to him If he would only give your brother
a situation you would do anything he Nigh t
ask OF you; you even tried to stigmatize the
man he mad in charge of his billiard hall.
You held up to him an argument in your let
ter that II he would only give your brother
that position to have charge of the billiard
hall you would write to all your influential
friends in Boston and New York to
patronize his house when they came to San
Francisco, and that they would fill his house
full. How absurd the ideal You wrote to him
on several occasions that If he would do so and
so by your brother it would show the manager
OF his house that he (Baldwin) was the man
ager, and that he would have his own way. In
TACT, your whole communications to him all
go TO show TO me that instead of he being in IT,
male with you it was far from that You
would have written to him differently about
giving your brother situation if it had been
so. Mr. Baldwin is a smart man and at the
same time think pretty honorable man. I
have made great many inquiries among peo-
pie who know him, and believe if he did W it'll
you as you say he did he would do the right
thing by you, but do not believe he has had
any more TO do with you than have had
dislike very much to 60 to the grave and
dig up ones misdeeds; they ought to be buried
with the individuals; but in case like this it
becomes necessary. Mr.. Balch is dead and
buried, but there are to-day witnesses alive
who know about many of his transactions
And when say to you there is living evidence
OF what have referred to in regard to you and
Mr.. Balch am telling you what you must
know is the truth, or 1 could never have
knownit.
Now, believing as I believe, and knowing as
l know, could not be party to the scheme to
be played on Lucky" Baldwin. am not the
b,ackmailer you took me for. Neither would
be party to q blackmailer. and [ firmly be-
lieve that if there were ever two blackmail-
ing schemes eoncocted and attempted to be
carried out, the one upon my client and the
other upon "Lucky" Baldwin are the blackest
ever heard OF.
| am surprised when I think that woman
like you born and educated in Vermont and
had the advantages that you had, should turn
her wits in the direction that you have turned
them. Had you used hall OF the energy and
sagacity that you have displayed in those two
plots, if you had turned them in the right di-