When you contemplate a steady wage asset of one hundred dollars per month coming in with the regularity of clockwork and as sure as the first day comes around (and the months go by very quickly), you think you are in a fair way to make some of the local financiers look very cheap in a few years to come.  Why, this means twelve hundred dollars every time the earth circumnavigates the sun, and is sixty thousand dollars in fifty years, which is not very long to a man if he can start just as soon as he passes the entrance and can build on no intervening lay-off by getting on the wrong side of the boss.  But when we offset with our liabilities, such as tobacco money, moving picture money, car fare, gasoline, rent, taxes, repairs to the auto, and other trifling incidentals such as food and clothing, we find at the end of the lunar excursion that there is no balance to salt down on the right side of our ledger, and our little castle becomes submerged because it was built with its foundation on the shifting sands.

But for all that, if a man and his money could be left alone—­if money were not such an envy-producer—­if a man with money had not so many friends and admirers and strangers who love him at first sight—­all might yet be well; and though he might not outclass some of the most corpulent magnates, he might in time acquire considerable moss in his own private, insignificant, Simple-Simon sort of way.  But the laws of nature have willed otherwise, and the strongest of us know that it is needless to go into litigation with the laws of gravitation, or spontaneous combustion.

Among the workings of nature (which some people say are all for the best), there is a class of men who have, rather truthfully, been called “sharks” on account of their fishlike habit of pouncing upon suckers unawares and without the legal three days’ grace being given, and of loading them into their stomachs—­finances and all—­before the person has time to draw and throw his harpoon.  It all happens while you are taking a mouthful of tea, or while you are reading the locals in the Ashcroft Journal, and when the spell leaves, you find that you have endorsed a proposition with a financial payment down, and the balance subject to call when you are very much financially embarrassed indeed.

Simple Simon was one of those men who move about this world unprotected and without having their wits about them.  He was not a sawfish, or a swordfish.  So one day when he was walking up Railway Avenue—­it was just the day after he had told someone that he had five hundred dollars of scrapings salted down, which was earning three per cent, at the local bank—­a very pretentious gentleman, spotlessly attired, accosted him: 

“Pardon me.  Are you Mr. Simon?”

“I have that asset,” said Simple, wondering how the aristocratic stranger had known him.

“I thought so.  I knew at a glance.  The fact is, I have just been speaking with Mr. C. Quick.” (This was a lie.  Mr. C. Quick was one of the money magnates of Ashcroft, but had not hired out his name as an endorsement)—­“and he recommended you to me as one of the leading men of the town.” (This was a ruse, but it hit the bull’s eye, and at the final count was one of the most telling shots.)