ttend his last
obsequies,--cannot fail to have their due effect upon the fashionable
world; and through them, the middle classes, who are so disposed to
imitate them in all things, will in course of time benefit by their
example. There is also, we believe, a growing disposition on the part of
the people at large to avoid the unmeaning displays we refer to; and it
only needs the repeated and decided expression of public opinion, to
secure a large measure of beneficial reform in this direction.

Societies have already been established in the United States, the
members of which undertake to disuse mourning themselves, and to
discountenance the use of it by others. It is only, perhaps, by
association and the power of numbers that this reform is to be
accomplished; for individuals here and there could scarcely be expected
to make way against the deeply-rooted prejudices of the community at
large.

CHAPTER XIII.

GREAT DEBTORS.

"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? You are
going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who never
understood arithmetic."--_Sydney Smith._

"Quand on doit et qu'on ne paye pas, c'est comme si on ne devait
pas."--_Araene Houssaye._

"Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father! What lies, what meanness,
what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double-dealing! How in
due season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles: how like a
knife, it will stab the houeat heart."--_Douglas Jerrold_.

"The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is
composed of two distinct races, _the men who borrow and the men who
lend_. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those
impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men,
black men, red men, and such-like."--_Charles Lamb_.

People do not know what troubles they are brewing for themselves when
they run into debt. It does not matter for what the debt is incurred. It
hangs like a millstone round a man's neck until he is relieved of it. It
presses like a nightmare upon him. It hinders the well-being of his
family. It destroys the happiness of his household.

Even those who are in the regular receipt of large incomes, feel
crippled, often for years, by the incubus of debt. Weighed down by this,
what can a man do to save--to economise with a view to the future of his
wife and children? A man in debt is disabled from insuring his life,
from insuring h