A moderately thoughtful man will by this time begin to think the elements of toil and of perplexity already suggested sufficient for the time and strength of any man, and more than he would wish to undertake.  But experience alone could teach him in how many ways indulged customers can and do manage to make the profit they pay so small, and the toil and vexation they occasion so great, that the jobber is often put upon weighing the question, Should I not be richer without them?  Thus, for example, some of them will affect to doubt that the jobber wishes to sell to them, and propose, as a test, that he shall let them have some choice article at the cost, or at less than the cost, now on one pretext, and now on another,—­intimating an indisposition to buy, if they cannot be indulged in that one thing.  If they carry their point, that exceptional price is thenceforth claimed as the rule.  Another day the concession will be asked on something else; and by extending this game so as to include a number of jobbers, these shrewd buyers will manage to lay in an assorted stock on which there will have been little or no profit to the sellers.  To cap the climax of vexation, these persons will very probably come in, after not many days, and propose to cash their notes at double interest off.  Only an official of the Inquisition could turn the thumb-screw so many times, and so remorselessly.

But we have yet to consider the collection of debts.  The jobber who has not capital so ample as to buy only for cash is expected invariably to settle his purchases by giving his note, payable at bank on a fixed day.  He pays it when due, or fails.  Not so with his customers:  multitudes of them shrink from giving a note payable at bank, and some altogether refuse to do so.  They wish to buy on open account; or to give a note to be paid at maturity, if convenient,—­otherwise not.  The number of really prompt and punctual men, as compared with those who are otherwise, is very small.  The number of those who never fail is smaller still.  The collection-laws are completely alike, probably, in no two States.  Some of them appear to have been constructed for the accommodation, not of honest creditors, but of dishonest debtors.  In others, they are such as to put each jobber in fear of every other,—­a first attachment taking all the property, if the debt be large enough, leaving little or nothing, usually, for those who have been willing to give the debtor such indulgence as might enable him to pay in full, were it granted by all his creditors.

No jobber can open his letters in the morning in the certainty of finding no tidings of a failure.  No jobber, leaving his breakfast-table, can assure his wife and children, sick or well, that he will dine or sup with them; any one of a dozen railroad-trains may, for aught he knows, be sweeping him away to some remote point, to battle with the mischances of trade, the misfortunes of honest men, or the knavery of rogues