Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
Confessions of an Attorney.
1880
Something more than half a century ago, a person, in going along Holborn,might have seen, near the corner of one of the thoroughfares whichdiverge towards Russell Square, the respectable-looking shop of a gloverand haberdasher named James Harvey, a man generally esteemed by hisneighbors, and who was usually considered well to do in the world. Likemany London tradesmen, Harvey was originally from the country. He hadcome up to town when a poor lad, to push his fortune, and by dint ofsteadiness and civility, and a small property left him by a distantrelation, he had been able to get into business on his own account, andto attain that most important element of success in London—"aconnection." Shortly after setting up in the world, he married a youngwoman from his native town, to whom he had been engaged ever since hisschool-days; and at the time our narrative commences he was the father ofthree children.
James Harvey's establishment was one of the best frequented of its classin the street. You could never pass without seeing customers going in orout. There was evidently not a little business going forward. Butalthough, to all appearance, a flourishing concern, the proprietor of theestablishment was surprised to find that he was continually pinched inhis circumstances. No matter what was the amount of business transactedover the counter, he never got any richer.
At the period referred to, shop-keeping had not attained that degreeof organization, with respect to counter-men and cashiers, which nowdistinguishes the great houses of trade. The primitive till was notyet superseded. This was the weak point in Harvey's arrangements; andnot to make a needless number of words about it, the poor man wasregularly robbed by a shopman, whose dexterity in pitching a guineainto the drawer, so as to make it jump, unseen, with a jerk into hishand, was worthy of Herr Dobler, or any other master of the sublimeart of jugglery.
Good-natured and unsuspicious, perhaps also not sufficiently vigilant,Harvey was long in discovering how he was pillaged. Cartwright, the name