he same time, injure yourself more. Better to
put up with the loss of one dollar than of two; to which is to be
added, all the loss of time, all the trouble, and all the mortification
and anxiety attending a lawsuit. To set an attorney at work to worry
and torment another man, and alarm his family as well as himself, while
you are sitting quietly at home, is baseness. If a man owe you money
which he cannot pay, why add to his distress, without even the _chance_
of benefiting yourself? Thousands have injured themselves by resorting
to the law, while very few, indeed, ever bettered their condition by
it.

Nearly a million of dollars was once expended in England, during the
progress of a single lawsuit. Those who brought the suit expended
$444,000 to carry it through; and the opposite party was acquitted, and
only sentenced to pay the cost of prosecution, amounting to $318,754.
Another was sustained in court fifty years, at an enormous expense. In
Meadville, in Pennsylvania, a petty law case occurred in which the
damages recovered were only ten dollars, while the costs of court were
one hundred. In one of the New England States, a lawsuit occurred,
which could not have cost the parties less than $1,000 each; and yet
after all this expense, they mutually agreed to take the matter out of
court, and suffer it to end where it was. Probably it was the wisest
course they could possibly have taken. It is also stated that a quarrel
occurred between two persons in Middlebury, Vermont, a few years since,
about _six eggs_, which was carried from one court to another, till it
cost the parties $4,000.

I am well acquainted with a gentleman who was once engaged in a
lawsuit, (than which none perhaps, was ever more just) where his claim
was one to two thousand dollars; but it fell into such a train that a
final decision could not have been expected in many months;--perhaps
not in years. The gentleman was unwilling to be detained and perplexed
with waiting for a trial, and he accordingly paid the whole amount of
costs to that time, amounting to $150, went about his business, and
believes, to this hour, that it was the wisest course he could have
pursued.

A spirit of litigation often disturbs the peace of a whole
neighborhood, perpetually, for several generations; and the hostile
feeling thus engendered seems to be transmitted, like the color of the
eyes or the hair, from father to son. Indeed it not unfrequently
happens, that a lawsu