Laying down the pen, and sinking back in my chair, here, perhaps, I fall into a five minutes’ reverie, and think of one, two, three, half a dozen cases in which I have been content to accept that sham promissory coin in return for sterling money advanced.  Not a reader, whatever his age, but could tell a like story.  I vow and believe there are men of fifty, who will dine well today, who have not paid their school debts yet, and who have not taken up their long-protested promises to pay.  Tom, Dick, Harry, my boys, I owe you no grudge, and rather relish that wince with which you will read these meek lines and say, “He means me.”  Poor Jack in Hades!  Do you remember a certain pecuniary transaction, and a little sum of money you borrowed “until the meeting of Parliament?” Parliament met often in your lifetime:  Parliament has met since:  but I think I should scarce be more surprised if your ghost glided into the room now, and laid down the amount of our little account, than I should have been if you had paid me in your lifetime with the actual acceptances of the Bank of England.  You asked to borrow, but you never intended to pay.  I would as soon have believed that a promissory note of Sir John Falstaff (accepted by Messrs. Bardolph and Nym, and payable in Aldgate,) would be as sure to find payment, as that note of the departed—­nay, lamented—­Jack Thriftless.

He who borrows, meaning to pay, is quite a different person from the individual here described.  Many—­most, I hope—­took Jack’s promise for what it was worth—­and quite well knew that when he said, “Lend me,” he meant “Give me” twenty pounds.  “Give me change for this half-crown,” said Jack; “I know it’s a pewter piece;” and you gave him the change in honest silver, and pocketed the counterfeit gravely.

What a queer consciousness that must be which accompanies such a man in his sleeping, in his waking, in his walk through life, by his fireside with his children round him!  “For what we are going to receive,” &c.—­he says grace before his dinner.  “My dears!  Shall I help you to some mutton?  I robbed the butcher of the meat.  I don’t intend to pay him.  Johnson my boy, a glass of champagne?  Very good, isn’t it?  Not too sweet.  Forty-six.  I get it from So-and-so, whom I intend to cheat.”  As eagles go forth and bring home to their eaglets the lamb or the pavid kid, I say there are men who live and victual their nests by plunder.  We all know highway robbers in white neck-cloths, domestic bandits, marauders, passers of bad coin.  What was yonder cheque which Major Delamere proposed I should cash but a piece of bad money?  What was Jack Thriftless’s promise to pay?  Having got his booty, I fancy Jack or the Major returning home, and wife and children gathering round about him.  Poor wife and children!  They respect papa very likely.  They don’t know he is false coin.  Maybe the wife has a dreadful inkling of the truth, and, sickening, tries to hide it from the daughters and sons.  Maybe she is