n crediting
others? No! To owe is the true heroic virtue!"

Yet, whatever may be said in praise of Debt, it has unquestionably a
very seedy side. The man in debt is driven to resort to many sorry
expedients to live. He is the victim of duns and sheriff's officers. Few
can treat them with the indifference that Sheridan did, who put them
into livery to wait upon his guests. The debtor starts and grows pale at
every knock at his door. His friends grow cool, and his relatives shun
him. He is ashamed to go abroad, and has no comfort at home. He becomes
crabbed, morose, and querulous, losing all pleasure in life. He wants
the passport to enjoyment and respect--money; he has only his debts, and
these make him suspected, despised, and snubbed. He lives in the slough
of despond. He feels degraded in others' eyes as well as in his own. He
must submit to impertinent demands, which he can only put off by sham
excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the
independent bearing of a man. He seeks to excite pity, and pleads for
time. A sharp attorney pounces on him, and suddenly he feels himself in
the vulture's gripe. He tries a friend or a relative, but all that he
obtains is a civil leer, and a cool repulse. He tries a money-lender;
and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It
is easy to see what the end will be,--a life of mean shifts and
expedients, perhaps ending in the gaol or the workhouse.

Can a man keep out of debt? Is there a possibility of avoiding the moral
degradation which accompanies it? Could not debt be dispensed with
altogether, and man's independence preserved secure? There is only one
way of doing this; by "living within the means." Unhappily, this is too
little the practice in modern times. We incur debt, trusting to the
future for the opportunity of defraying it. We cannot resist the
temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a
high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a
third must give dinners and music-parties:--all good things in their
way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a
shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide
them are the butcher, the poulterer, and the wine-merchant, whom you are
in debt to, and cannot pay?

A man has no business to live in a style which his income cannot
support, or to mortgage his earnings of next week or of next year, in
order