Temptation and Atonement, and Other Tales (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN ACCOUNT OF A CREDITOR. 159 AN ACCOUNT OF A CREDITOR. People plead guilty to duns: ?the word carries an air of defiance with it which they fancy becoming. But few like to talk of their creditors;?a name which, by conveying a consciousness of legal responsibility, conveys also a wound to their self-love. Yet, from the moment that, by drawing breath, we incur the debt of nature, to that when the bell, tolling over our remains, conveys pecuniary liability to our inheritors, life is a series of indebtments. Thrice happy the man who sleeps solvent upon his pillow. But scarcely less pitiful the wretch who lays his head there absolutely debtless;?untrusted either because untrustworthy, or because unwilling to accord credit in return ! The pre-eminence of Great Britain among nations is ascribed by the farthest-sighted philosophers to the magnitude of her national debt; and but for the stimulus of private liabilities, where would be the best works of the best authors, ?the best pictures of the best artists, ?the best articles of the best magazines? The high-mettled scribbler starts off at speed on the slightest spur of a dun; and the Scotch novels are in a great measure the works of the creditors of Scott. A gentleman with whom I recently became acquainted supplied me not alone with the foregoing theory of philosophy, but with the following narrative in support of his system?" My parents," said he, " died when I was a schoolboy, having been what is called ' unfortunate;' and I was bequeathed to the guardianship of a crabbed uncle, with so small a patrimony, that I and it together seemed scarcely worth the trouble of looking after. To me, however, those three thousand pounds appeared to contain a mine of wealth; and, in my vague notions of independence, Iscorned all mention...