. I've much more respect for you now that you see your fault and
confess it. I'm convinced now that you have a conscience, and that
you will be likely to make some use of it in the future. I'm
particularly grateful to your wife. She has shown me that she is just
a woman, and not an angel. I don't believe that it was at all
necessary for you to have groveled in aristocratic crimes in order to
win her heart. The yacht cruise and the tandem and the violets and the
Fifth Avenue clothes and the ton of candy were quite superfluous. You
needed only to tell her the truth, like a man, and say that you loved
her.'

"'It is true, Roger,' said the girl as she broke down again.

"'I did it all to please you, dear,' the boy answered, in his effort
to comfort her.

"'And it did please me,' she said, brokenly, 'but I know that I should
have been better pleased if--'

"She hesitated, and I expressed her thought for her:

"'If he had centralized on manhood. There is something sweeter than
violets and grander than fine raiment in a sort of character that a
boy should offer to the girl he loves.'

"They were both convinced. It was easy to see that now, and I promised
to do what I could for them.

"I got a schedule of the young man's debts and found that he owed,
among other debts, six thousand dollars to sundry shops and department
stores in New York--the purchases of his wife in the eight months of
their wedded life. I asked her how it could have happened.

"'He opened accounts for me and said I could buy what I wanted, and
you know it is so easy to say "Charge it,'" was her answer. 'Every one
has accounts these days, and they tempt you to buy more than you
need.'

"'It is true. Credit is the latest ally of the devil. It is the great
tempter. It is responsible for half the extravagance of modern life.
The two words 'charge it' have done more harm than any others in the
language. They have led to a vast amount of unnecessary buying. They
have developed a talent for extravagance in our people. They have
created a large and growing sisterhood and brotherhood of dead-beats.
They have led to bankruptcy and slow pay and bad debts. They have
raised the cost of everything we require because the tradesman compels
us to pay his uncollected accounts. They are added to your bills and
mine, and the merchant prince suffers no impairment of his fortune.

"Bessie's bank-account was also overdrawn. That reminds me of a new
sinner--the bank-ch