“Mrs. Fye, it surprises me that such proud people as you Americans should condescend to the meanness of borrowing from those whom you affect to despise.  Besides, as you never repay us for what you pretend to borrow, I look upon it as a system of robbery.  If strangers unfortunately settle among you, their good-nature is taxed to supply your domestic wants, at a ruinous expense, besides the mortification of finding that they have been deceived and tricked out of their property.  If you would come honestly to me and say, ’I want these things, I am too poor to buy them myself, and would be obliged to you to give them to me,’ I should then acknowledge you as a common beggar, and treat you accordingly; give or not give, as it suited my convenience.  But in the way in which you obtain these articles from me, you are spared even a debt of gratitude; for you well know that the many things which you have borrowed from me will be a debt owing to the Day of Judgment.”

“S’pose they are,” quoth Betty, not in the least abashed at my lecture on honesty, “you know what the Scripture saith, ’It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

“Ay, there is an answer to that in the same book, which doubtless you may have heard,” said I, disgusted with her hypocrisy, “’The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again.’”

Never shall I forget the furious passion into which this too apt quotation threw my unprincipled applicant.  She lifted up her voice and cursed me, using some of the big oaths temporarily discarded for conscience sake.  And so she left me, and I never looked upon her face again.

When I removed to our own house, the history of which, and its former owner, I will give by-and-by, we had a bony, red-headed, ruffianly American squatter, who had “left his country for his country’s good,” for an opposite neighbour.  I had scarcely time to put my house in order before his family commenced borrowing, or stealing from me.  It is even worse than stealing, the things procured from you being obtained on false pretences—­adding lying to theft.  Not having either an oven or a cooking stove, which at that period were not so cheap or so common as they are now, I had provided myself with a large bake-kettle as a substitute.  In this kettle we always cooked hot cakes for breakfast, preferring that to the trouble of thawing the frozen bread.  This man’s wife was in the habit of sending over for my kettle whenever she wanted to bake, which, as she had a large family, happened nearly every day, and I found her importunity a great nuisance.

I told the impudent lad so, who was generally sent for it; and asked him what they did to bake their bread before I came.

“I guess we had to eat cakes in the pan; but now we can borrow this kettle of your’n, mother can fix bread.”

I told him that he could have the kettle this time; but I must decline letting his mother have it in future, for I wanted it for the same purpose.