ook so dark and dignified. I am serious. If
no--why no, and there let the matter rest, as far as you are
concerned; if yes, why yes, and so I have an auditor who can
understand me.

As for me, I have been protested. I say it neither with shame nor
pride. Yes, I have suffered notarial visitation, and am still alive
to tell the tale.

I was in business when the exciting event occurred, and I am still
in business, and I believe as well off as I was then. But let me
relate the circumstance.

When I first started in the world for myself, I had a few thousand
dollars. In a little while, I found myself solicited on all sides to
make bills. I could have bought fifty thousand dollars' worth of
goods as easily as to the amount of five thousand dollars; and the
smallest sum I have named was about the extent of my real capital.
There was one firm importunate above the rest, and they were
successful in getting me into their debt more heavily than I was to
any other house. If I happened to be passing their store, I would be
called in, with--

"Here, Jones, I want to show you something. New goods just in; the
very thing for your sales."

Or--

"Ah! how are you, Jones? Can't we sell you a bill, to-day?"

They were for ever importuning me to buy, and often tempted me to
make purchases of goods that I really did not want. I was young and
green then, and did not know any thing about shelves full of odds
and ends, and piece upon piece of unsaleable goods, all of which had
to be paid for.

For two or three years, I managed to keep along, though not so
pleasantly as if I had used my credit with less freedom. By that
time, however, the wheels of my business machinery were sadly
clogged. From a salesman behind my counter, I became a "financier." (!)

During the best hours of the day, and when I was most wanted in the
store, I was on the street, hunting for money. It was borrow,
borrow, borrow, and pay, pay, pay. My thoughts were not directed
toward the best means of making my business profitable, but were
upon the ways and means of paying my notes, that were falling due
with alarming rapidity. I was nearly all the time in the delectable
state of mind of the individual who, on running against a sailor,
was threatened with being knocked "into the middle of next week."
"Do it, for heaven's sake!" he replied--"I would give the world to
be there."

On Monday morning, I could see my way through the week no clearer
than this note-haun