86 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPAEDIA, 



plate dazzled princes ? or that flourishing clerk, who drove the high-step- 

 ping horse to his office ? The same. And his crime ? Fraud and 

 .swindling. What demon could urge so respectable a man to so shameful 

 an act ? I know not the name of the demon, but the cause of the crime 

 the wretch tells you himself. Ask him: what is his answer? "I got 

 into debt no way to get out of it but the way which I took to the dock, 

 to the jail, to the hulks !" 



Easy to keep out of debt ! No, my young friend, it is difficult. Are 

 you rich ? The bland tradesman cries, " Pay when you please." Your 

 rents or your father's allowance will not be due for three months ; your 

 purse in the mean while can not afford you some pleasant vice or some in- 

 nocent luxury, which to young heirs seems a want. You are about to 

 relinquish the vice or dispense with the luxury ; a charming acquaintance, 

 who lives no one knows how, though no one lives better, introduces an 

 amiable creature, sleek as a cat, with paws of velvet hiding claws of steel, 

 his manners are pleasing, his calling usury. You want the money for 

 three months. Why say three ? Your name to a bill for six months, and 

 the vice or the luxury is yours the next hour ! Certainly the easy thing 

 here is to put your name to the bill. Presto ! you are in debt the demon 

 has you down in his books. 



Are you poor ? Still your character is yet without stain, and your char- 

 acter is a property on which you can borrow a trifle. But when you 

 borrow on your character, it is your character that you leave in pawn. 

 The property to you is priceless, and the loan that subjects it to be a 

 pledge unredeemed is a trifle. 



Young friend, be thou patrician or plebeian, learn to say No at the first 

 to thy charming acquaintance. The worst that the " No" can inflict on 

 thee is a privation a want always short of starvation. No young man, 

 with the average health of youth, need be in danger of starving. But,, 

 despite that privation or want, thy youth itself is such riches that there is 

 not a purse-proud old millionaire of sixty who, provided thy good name- 

 be unsoiled, would not delightedly change with thee. Be contented ! Say 

 No ! Keep unscathed the good name, keep out of peril the honour, with- 

 out which even yon battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on 

 half-pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles. 



Here I pause, seemingly to digress, really to enlarge the scope of my 

 reasoning. In the world around and without us there are first principles 

 which dely all philosophy. We may arrive with Newton at the law of 

 gravitation ; there we stop. " We enquire no more," says Sir William 



