I have in mind another class, -the well-meaning people who incur debt and trust to future earnings to meet it. It is a grave mistake, because it does not take into account the uncertainties of life-sickness, accident, loss of work, fluctuation in the market, and many other things. Debt should be regarded as a detraction from self-respect. Longfellow put the badge of manhood on the Village Blacksmith by keeping him out of debt :

"His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can

And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man."

Burns by implication excludes a debtor in his advice to a young friend :

"To catch Dame Fortune's golden smile, Assiduous wait upon her;

And gather gear by ev'ry wile
That's justified by honor;

Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."

Dr. Horace Bushnell was described as having "a genius for paying his debts," and it consisted in never making a pecuniary obligation to the amount of one dollar without knowing where it was to come from, and in paying it when due with the promptness of the rising sun.

One may indeed have fallen under the wheels of misfortune or may have ample resources for meeting slight obligations, but that a self

respecting man should have debt resting upon him with only future earnings to meet it, is a burden that sinks him below the stature of manhood. The remedy is simple; pay for what you get; if you cannot, go without. It is hard indeed to go without, and necessity-the cry of children for bread, the freezing cold, the sick wife, such cases know no law or rule. But in the vast majority of instances in which debt is incurred, it might be avoided by stern resolve and greater simplicity in living. It may be hard to go without, but it is harder to be in debt. It is not agreeable to be shabbily dressed, but to

be unable to pay one's bills is to be shabby within-in moral rags and coarsest sackcloth. Alas for the misery and the shame and the loss and the ruin of it! It drags buyer and seller down together. It taxes honest purchasers who must share with the merchant his losses through uncollected bills and prolonged interest. There is not an aspect of the subject that is not immoral, and the outlook is always towards some sort of a catastrophe, or to downright shame. It is a matter about which every man and woman should have solid conviction and intense feeling. It should be regarded as a malignant disease, an op

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pressor and enslaver, a vice and a lure of the devil. It destroys peace of mind so long as the mind retains its sensibility; it takes away freedom until it degenerates into recklessness; it involves one in general contempt; it is a confession of incompetency and meanness. It is not easy to imagine how an insolvent man can die in peace. It was the drunken Stephano who said that "he that dies pays all debts"; and Trinculo was not too drunk to perceive that under such a maxim the "state totters." If one carries no other memory out of the world, I think he will remember his debts. Dante put crowns of