One week later the young man called to tell me he had not been able to do more than keep himself sustained at lunch-counters since he called, but hoped soon to obtain a position on a daily newspaper.

That was ten years ago.  The young man sat in an orchestra chair the other night at the theatre directly in front of me, and his attire was faultlessly up to date.  From the costume of his companion, I should judge their carriage waited outside.

The young man did not seem to recognize me, and no doubt the incident I mention has escaped his memory.

In all probability I was but one of a score of people who helped him with small loans.  Had the young man had been forced to appeal to the society organized in every city for aiding the deserving poor, by being sent disappointed from my door, the ordeal would have so hurt his pride, that he might not have become the professional borrower he undoubtedly is.

I could relate innumerable cases of a similar nature.  One man, who was a fashionable teacher of French among the millionaires of New York for several seasons, appealed to me at a time of year when all his patrons were out of the city for a loan to enable him to give his wife medical treatment.

He was to repay it in the autumn.  Instead, he came to me then with a much more distressing story of immediate need and seeming proof of money coming to him in a few months.  To my chagrin, the loan I advanced was employed in giving a feast to friends at his daughter’s wedding, after which he obliterated himself from my vision.

Financial aid lent a woman who soon afterward circled Europe, brought no reimbursement.  Her handsomely engraved card, with the “Russell Square Hotel, London,” as address, reached me instead of the interest money which perhaps paid the engraver.

Money lent a young man to start a small business, was used for his wedding expenses, and an interval of five years brings no word from him.  Poor and despicable beings indeed, become the victims of the borrowing habit.  It is the shattered faith in humanity, and the heart hurts that I regret, rather than the loss of what can be replaced.  I tell you these incidents that you may realize how I have come to regard money-lending, as a species of unkindness to a friend or relative.

It is only one step removed from giving a sick or overtaxed man or woman a morphine powder.

Sleep and rest ensue, but ten to one the habit is formed for life.

The happy experiences of my life in money-lending, have been two instances where I offered loans which were not asked, and which proved to be bridges over the chasm of temporary misfortune, to the success awaiting a worthy woman and man.  The really deserving rarely ask for loans.

I can imagine with what pleasure you would take a cheque from this letter, for the amount which would carry you through college.

Yet when you had finished your course, you would find so many things you wanted to do, and must do, the debt would become too heavy to lift, save by borrowing from some one else.