nary fortunes with it;
the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded
with the consequent cry of "hard times."

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a
usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and
the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber; the
thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every
one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices
hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a
"friend in need"--that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness
of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his
customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge,
from his door.

In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man,
and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a
vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished
and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness
of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and
as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axletrees, you would
have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good
things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He
thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and
set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became,
therefore, all of a sudden, a violent churchgoer. He prayed loudly and
strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one
might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the clamor
of his Sunday devotion.

The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly traveling
Zion-ward were struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly
outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in
religious as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of
his neighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account
became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the
expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a
word, Tom's zeal beca