handwriting of the attorney; that puts a voice of terror in the knocker; that makes the heart quake at the haunted fireside; debt, the invisible demon that walks abroad with a man, now quickening his steps, now making him look on all sides like a hunted beast, and now bringing to his face the ashy hue of death as the unconscious passenger looks glancingly upon him! Poverty is a bitter draught, yet may, and sometimes can, with advantage, be gulped down. Though the drinker makes wry faces, there may, after all, be a wholesome goodness in the cup. But debt, however courteously it may be offered, is the cup of Syren; and the wine, spiced and delicious though it be, is poison. The man out of debt, though with a flaw in his jerkin, a crack in his shoe leather, and a hole in his hat, is still the son of liberty, free as the singing lark above him; but the debtor, although clothed in the utmost bravery, what is he but a serf out upon a holiday-a slave to be reclaimed at any instant by his owner, the creditor? My son, if poor, see Hyson in the running spring; see thy mouth water at a last week's roll; think a threadbare coat the only wear; and acknowledge a whitewashed garret the fittest housing place for a gentleman; do this, and flee debt. So shall thy heart be at rest and the sheriff confounded."

Somebody truly says that one debt begets another. If a man owes you a dollar, he is sure to owe you a grudge, too, and he is generally more ready to pay interest on the latter than on the former. Contracting debts is not unlike the man who goes to sea without a

compass he may steer clear of rocks, sandbars, a lee shore, and breakers, but the chances are greatly against him; and, if he runs foul of either, ten to one he is lost. The present indiscriminate credit system is a labyrinth, the entrance is easy, but how to get out-that's the question. It is an endless chain, and if one link breaks in a particular community, it degrades the whole. The concussion may break many more, create a panic, and the chain become useless. If this misfortune would cure the evil, it would be a blessing in disguise; but so deeply rooted is this system among us, that no sooner is one chain destroyed than another is manufactured; an increasing weight is put upon it; presently some of its links snap, another concussion is produced, and creates a new panic; car after car rushes down the inclined plane of bankruptcy, increas ing the mass of broken fragments and general ruin, all so commingled that a Philadelphia lawyer, aided by constables and sheriffs, can bring but little order out of the confusion. At the outset, especially among merchants, a ruinous tax is imposed by this system upon the vendor and vendee. The seller, in addition to a fair profit for cash in hand, adds a larger per cent. to meet losses from bad debts, but which often falls far short of the mark. Each purchaser, who is ultimately able to pay, bears the proportionate burden of this tax, and both contribute large sums to indulge those who cannot, and what is worse, those who never intend to pay; thus encouraging fraud. On every hand we see people living on credit, putting off pay day to the last, making in the end some desperate

effort, either by begging or borrowing, to scrape the money together, and then struggling on again, with the canker of care eating at their heart, to the inevitable goal of bankruptcy. If people would only make a push at the beginning, instead of the end, they would save themselves all this misery. The great secret of being solvent, and well-to-do, and comfortable, is to get ahead of your expenses. Eat and drink this month what you earned last month-not what you are going to earn next month. There are, no doubt, many persons so unfortunately situated that they can never accomplish this. No man can to a certainty guard against ill health; no man can insure himself a wellconducted, helpful family, or a permanent income. Friendships are broken over debts; forgeries and murders are committed on their account; and, however considered, they are a source of cost and annoyanceand that continually. They break in everywhere upon the harmonious relations of men; they render men servile or tyrannous, as they chance to be debtors or creditors; they blunt sensitiveness to personal inde pendence, and, in no respect that we can fathom, do they advance the general well-being.

Failure.

IN every community there are men who are determined not to work if work can be shirked. Without

avowing this determination to themselves, or reflecting that they are fighting against a law of nature, they begin life with a resolution to enjoy all the good things that are accumulated by the labor of man, without contributing their own share of labor to the common stock. Hence the endless schemes for getting rich in a day for reaching the goal of wealth by a few gigantic bounds, instead of by slow and plodding steps. It matters not in what such men deal, whether in oroide watches or in watered stock; whether they make "corners" in wheat or in gold; whether they gamble in oats or at roulette; whether they steal a railway or a man's money by "gift-concerts "--the principle is in all cases the same, namely, to obtain something for nothing, to get values without parting with anything in exchange. Everybody knows the history of such men, the vicissitudes they experience— vicissitudes rendering the millionaire of to-day a beg. gar to-morrow.

Firms are constantly changing. Splendid mansions change hands suddenly. A brilliant party is held in an up-town house, the sidewalk is carpeted, and the papers are full of the brilliant reception. The next season the house will be dismantled, and a family, "going into the country," or "to Europe," will offer their imported furniture to the public under the hammer. A brilliant equipage is seen in the parks in the early part of the season, holding gaily dressed ladies and some successful speculators. Before the season closes some government officer or sporting man will drive that team on his own account, while the gay

party that called the outfit their own in the early part This grows

There

of the season have passed away forever. This out of the manner in which business is done. is no thrift, no forecast, no thought for the morrow. A man who makes fifty thousand dollars, instead of settling half of it on his wife and children, throws the whole into a speculation with the expectation of making it a hundred thousand. A successful dry goods jobber, who has a balance of seventy-five thousand dollars to his credit in the bank, instead of holding it for a wet day or a tight time, goes into a little stock speculation and hopes to make a fortune at a strike. Men who have a good season launch out into extravagancies and luxuries, and these, with the gambling mapia, invariably carry people under.

A gentleman, who had a very successful trade, built him an extraordinary country seat in Westchester county, which was the wonder of the age. His house was more costly than the palace of the Duke of Buc cleuch. His estate comprised several acres laid out in the most expensive manner, and the whole was encir cled with gas lights, several hundred in number, which were lit every evening. As might have been expected, with the first reverse, (and it comes sooner or later to all,) the merchant was crushed, and as he thought disgraced; and he was soon carried to his sepulchre, the wife obliged to leave her luxurious home, and by the kindness of creditors was allowed, with her children, to find temporary refuge in the coachman's loft in her

stable.

Americans are always in a hurry when they have an