a scrap of paper is ever made out for No. 31.  It is an anonymous house; its owner pays his way to obscurity.  No one knows anything about him, or heeds his movements.  If a carriage be seen at his door, the neighborhood is not full of concern lest he be going to run away.  If a package be removed from his house, a score of boys are not employed to watch whether it be carried to the pawnbroker.  Mr. Payall fills no place in the public mind; no one has any hopes or fears about him.

The creditor always figures in the fancy as a sour, single man, with grizzled hair, a scowling countenance, and a peremptory air, who lives in a dark apartment, with musty deeds about him, and an iron safe, as impenetrable as his heart, grabbing together what he does not enjoy, and what there is no one about him to enjoy.  The debtor, on the other hand, is always pictured with a wife and six fair-haired daughters, bound together in affection and misery, full of sensibility, and suffering without a fault.  The creditor, it is never doubted, thrives without a merit.  He has no wife and children to pity.  No one ever thinks it desirable that he should have the means of living.  He is a brute for insisting that he must receive, in order to pay.  It is not in the imagination of man to conceive that his creditor has demands upon him which must be satisfied, and that he must do to others as others must do to him.  A creditor is a personification of exaction.  He is supposed to be always taking in, and never giving out.

People idly fancy that the possession of riches is desirable.  What blindness!  Spend and regale.  Save a shilling and you lay it by for a thief.  The prudent men are the men that live beyond their means.  Happen what may, they are safe.  They have taken time by the forelock.  They have anticipated fortune.  “The wealthy fool, with gold in store,” has only denied himself so much enjoyment, which another will seize at his expense.  Look at these people in a panic.  See who are the fools then.  You know them by their long faces.  You may say, as one of them goes by in an agony of apprehension, “There is a stupid fellow who fancied himself rich, because he had fifty thousand dollars in bank.”  The history of the last ten years has taught the moral, “spend and regale.”  Whatever is laid up beyond the present hour, is put in jeopardy.  There is no certainty but in instant enjoyment.  Look at schoolboys sharing a plum cake.  The knowing ones eat, as for a race; but a stupid fellow saves his portion; just nibbles a bit, and “keeps the rest for another time.”  Most provident blockhead!  The others, when they have gobbled up their shares, set upon him, plunder him, and thrash him for crying out.