CALIFORNIAN CRIME.

Evening Star, Issue 3322, 13 October 1873, Page 3

CALIFORNIAN CRIME.

There is a subtle and delicate flavor about Californian crime not to be matched by the felonies of any other known locality. They taste of the soil. There is a region in Sardinia the bitterness of whose earth is perceptible in its honey ; and delicate tasters have noticed in wines of Eastern France a flavor of flint; in those of Burgundy a smell like that of the sprouts of wild eglantine, and a taste of faded rose leaves. And the 'soil seems to transmit its quality to human actions, as well as its flavor to honey and wine, or grapes or laurel blossoms. Here comes record of a little criminal drama in five acts, enact* d there by the borders of the Pacific, in which one Whitney, having a sum of money in bank and owing an equal sum, consulted one Dixon as to the best means of avoiding payment. Dixon promptly counselled that Whitney should withdraw the money and lodge it secretly in his hands, so that it could not he attached by legal process, ”1 his was done ; but w hen "W hitney desired to withdraw the sum from his ingenious and guileless friend, the latter denied all knowledge of the transaction. J hereupon the despoiled Whitney craves the interposition of the law, and makes a clean breast ©fit. The legal myrmidons overhaul Dixon, and it is at last discovered that he has made over the cash to an evil woman nam d l!i----chardson, with the understanding that both are to fly. r joining each o‘hcr in a distant city, where they can diffuse the booty in peace, t-’earching and urgent investigation of this person disclosed the fact 'hat she had just perfected her arrangements to throw overboard her fellow-felon and run away with another man —a man of the Hoodlum order, with a taking eye and a correct taste in hair oil. Search for this young man brought to light the amusing fact that he bad spent quite a good porti n of the money in purchasing a fugitive outfit for another young woman, who, as soon as she had got the articles, did literally and actually fly with still another young man about whom nothing is known, except that he seems to be the only one in this strange succession ofcriminals who has reaped any of the fruits of the original crime. Considering the extreme complicaMon and embarrassment of everybody concerned, and the small likelihood that he will ever get any of h'S money back, it is possible that Whitney may now almost wish that, instead of mobilising hi* capital in that secret fashion, he had quietly paid his debts with it. —Xew York Tribune.