“Ah, Peyton, my fine fellow!  How are you? how are you?” And he shook Peyton’s hand quite vigorously.

“Hearty!—­and how are you, Freeman?”

“Oh, gay as a lark.  I have come to ask a favour of you.”

“Name it.”

“I want fifty dollars.”

Peyton shrugged his shoulders.

“I must have it, my boy!  I never yet knew you to desert a friend, and I don’t believe you will do so now.”

“Suppose I haven’t fifty dollars?”

“You can borrow it for me.  I only want it for a few days.  You shall have it back on next Monday.  Try for me—­there’s a generous fellow!”

“There’s a generous fellow,” was irresistible.  It came home to Peyton in the right place.  He forgot poor Mrs. Lee, his unpaid tailor’s bill, and sundry other troublesome accounts.

“If I can get an advance of fifty dollars on my salary to-morrow, you shall have it.”

“Thank you! thank you!  I knew I shouldn’t have to ask twice when I called upon Henry Peyton.  It always does me good to grasp the hand of such a man as you are.”

On the next day, an advance of fifty dollars was asked and obtained.  This sum was loaned as promised.  In two weeks, the individual who borrowed it was in New Orleans, from whence he had the best of reasons for not wishing to return to the north.  Of course, the generous Henry Peyton lost his money.

An increase of salary to a thousand dollars only made him less careful of his money.  Before, he lived as freely as if his income had been one-third above what it was; now, he increased his expenses in a like ratio.  It was a pleasure to him to spend his money—­not for himself alone, but among his friends.

It is no cause of wonder, that in being so generous to some, he was forced to be unjust to others.  He was still behindhand with his poor old washer-woman—­owed for boarding, clothes, hats, boots, and a dozen other matters—­and was, in consequence, a good deal harassed with duns.  Still, he was called by some of his old cronies, “a fine, generous fellow.”  A few were rather colder in their expressions.  He had borrowed money from them, and did not offer to return it; and he was such a generous-minded young man, that they felt a delicacy about calling his attention to it.

“Can you raise a couple of thousand dollars?” was asked of him by a friend, when he was twenty-seven years old.  “If you can, I know a first-rate chance to get into business.”

“Indeed!  What is the nature of it?”

The friend told him all he knew, and he was satisfied that a better offering might never present itself.  But two thousand dollars were indispensable.

“Can’t you borrow it?” suggested the friend.

“I will try.”

“Try your best.  You will never again have such an opportunity.”

Peyton did try, but in vain.  Those who could lend it to him considered him “too good-hearted a fellow” to trust with money; and he was forced to see that tide, which if he could have taken it at the flood, would have led him on to fortune, slowly and steadily recede.