Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Great Diamond Hoax and Other Stirring Incidents: In the Life of Asbury Harpending
On my return to California, after an absence of many years, my attention was called, for the first time, to the fact that my name had been associated unpleasantly with the great diamond fraud that startled the financial world nearly half a century ago. Plain duty to my family name and reputation compelled me to tell the whole story of that strange incident so far as my knowl edge of it extends. I sincerely trust that a candid read ing of these pages will satisfy the public that I was only a dupe, along with some of the most distinguished financiers of the last generation. Concerning two of the historians who maligned me, I am without redress. They are dead. The latest author, Mr. John P. Young, repeated the accusation of his predecessors in his his tory of San Francisco. This gentleman has admitted that he merely copied the story of the earlier works, having no personal knowledge of events at that period, and has handsomely admitted, over his signature, that he unconsciously did me an injustice.
To the diamond story I have added, at the request of friends, some of my experiences and reminiscences of California of the early days.
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