Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 Excerpt:...Queen Square, Bloomsbury. On reviewing the harsh conduct of the usurer, I must in fairness own, that his provocation from Rolfe has been great. From what I myself know, Krift has on more than one occasion put himself out of the way to oblige him with loans, craftily secured, 'tis true, but which might have been refused and have thereby damaged the credit of the falling man. Had he not unfortunately wounded the moneylender's pride, by open accusation and studiously explaining his unscrupulous mal-practices, in a Bankruptcy Court, how easy would it have been for me to accommodate this matter! Seldom looking beyond his merely sordid interest, Krift would be the most facile and practicable of men, in quietly arranging any affair of the kind; as it is I fear nothing short of the life of his victim, will appease the vengeance of the exposed and repudiated swindler. And this is but one more serious, out of the numerous cases that have crossed my experience where an angry word or a peevish inuendo has done more to injure a cause than all the innate malice of crime--the mischief of villainy--or the blunderings and hallucinations of ignorance and folly. Save me from choleric clients! they are sand-banks and shoals on which skill, zeal and justice are sure to be wrecked! Revolving thoughts similar to these in my mind, I entered a hackney coach and was at Tothill Fields prison in a quarter of an hour. I had scarcely been put down, when I recognised Mrs. Rolfe and old Aylwin, standing at the corner of a dingy public house, whence issued squalid, heartbroken-looking women, bearing mugs of beer and small plates of meat to the jail, as it was the hour when the prisoners were permitted to see their friends. In stepping from the coach, I saw the gate-keeper brandish his huge...