Hard Cashby Charles ReadePREFACE"HARD CASH," like "The Cloister and the Hearth," is a matter-of-fact Romancethat is, a fiction built on truths; and these truths have been gathered by long, severe, systematic labour, from a multitude of volumes, pamphlets, journals, reports, blue-books, manuscript narratives, letters, and living people, whom I have sought out, examined, and cross-examined, to get