The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-12-09
Debt.

Debt.
Living beyond their incomes is the
ruin of many of my neighbors they can
hardly afford to keep rabbit. and must
need drive poney and chaise. am
afraid extravaganza is the common disease
of the times, and many protesting. chris.
tians have caught it, to their shame and
sorrow. Good cotton or snuff gowns are
not good enough nowadays, girls must
have silk and satins, and then there is a
bill at the dress makers as long as a win.
ter's light and quite as dismal. Show
and style and snartness run away with q
mans means, keep the family poor, and
the fathers nose on grindstone. Frogs
try to look as big as bulls, and burst
themselves. A pound week apes five
hundred a year, and comes to the country
court. Men burn the candle at both
ends, and then say they are unfortunate
willy don't they put the saddle on the
right horse, and say they are extrava-
CANT? Economy is half the battle iu
life; it is not so hard to earn money as
to spend it well. Hundreds would have
never known want if they had not first
known vast. If all poor mems wives
knew how to cook, how far q little might
gol Our minister says:
"Thc French and Germans beat us all
hollow in nice cheap cookery; ! wish
they would send us missionaries over to
convert our gossiping women into good
managers this is a French fashion which
would be deals more useful than those
fine pictures in Mrs. Fippery's window,
with ladies rugged out in new style cy-
cry month. Dear me! some people are
much too fine nowadays to eat what their
fathers were thankful to see on the table,
and so they please the palates with costly
feeding, come to the work-housc, and
expect everybody to pity them. They
turned up their noses at bread aud butter
and came to eat raw turnips stolen out of
fields. They who live like fighting cocks
at other mems cost will get their combs cut
or perhaps get asted for it one of these
days. you have great store of peas i.
you may put the more in the soup; but
everybody should fare according to his
earnings. He is both fool and knave
who has shilling coming in, and on the
strength oft spendsa pound which does
not belong to him. Cut your coat ac-
cording to your cloth is sound advice;
but cutting other peoples cloth by run
ming into debt is as like thicving as four
four-pence is like goat.
Debtors can hardly help being liars,
for they promise to pay when they know
they cannot, and when they have made up
lot of false excuses they promise again,
and so they lie as fast as a horse can
trot.
Now, if owing leads to lying, who
shall say that it is not most evil thing.
Of course, there are exceptions, and 1 do
not want to bear hard upon an honest
man who is brought down by sickness or
losses; but take the rule as q rule, and
you will find debt to be a great dismal
swamp, huge mud-hole, dirty ditch;
happy is the man who gets out of it after
once tumbling in, but the happiest of all
is he who has been by Gods good
ness kept out of the mire altogether. If
you once ask the dewitt dinner it will be
hard to get him out of the house again;
better to have nothing to do with him.
Where hen has laid one egg, she is
very likely to lay another; when man
is once in debt, he is likely to get into it
again; better keep clear of it from the
first. He who gets in for penny will
soon be in for pound, and when man
is over shoes, he is very liable to be over
boots. Never owe farthing, and you
will never owe guinea.
Ny motto is, pay as you 60, and keep
from small scores. Short reckonings are
soon cleared. PAY what you owe, and
what you're worth you'll know"
Let the clock tick, but no "tick"
for me. Better 60 to bed without your
supper than get up in debt. Sins and
debt are always more than We think them
to be.
Little by little man gets over his head
and ears. 1t is the petty expenses that emp
ty the purse Money is round, and rolls
away easily. Tom Thriftless buys what
he does not want because it is great
bargain, and so is soon brought to sell
what he does want, and finds it very
little bargain. He cannotsay "No' to his
friend who wants him to be, security he
gives grand dinners, makes many holi-
days, keeps fat table, lets his wife dress
fine, never looks after his servants; and
by and by he is quite surprised to find
the quarter days come round so very fast,
and that his creditors bark SO loud. He
has sowed his money in the field of
thoughtlessness, and now he wonders that
he has to reap the harvest of poverty.
Still he hopes for something to turn up to
help him out of difficulty, and so muddles
himself into more trouble, forgettingthat
hope and expectation are FOOLS income.
Being hard up, he goes to market,
with empty pockets, and buys at'what'
ever prices tradesmen like to charge him,
and so he pays them double, and gets
deeper into the nire. This leads him to
scheming, and trying little tricks and
mean lodges for it is hard for an empty
sack to sta"l upright. This is sure not to
answer, for schemers are like spiders
webs which never catch anything better
than flies, and are soon swept away. AS
we'll attempt to mend your shoes with
brown paper, or stop broken window
with sheet of ice, as to try to patch up
falling business with maneuvering
and scheming. When the scbemer is
found out, he is like a dog in Church,
whom every body kicks at, and like a
barrel of powder, which nobody wants for
a neighbor.
They say poverty is sixth sense, and
it had need be-, for many debtors seem to
have lost the other five, or were born
without common sense, for they appear
to fancy that you not only make debts,
but pay them, by borrowing. A man
pays Peter with what he has borrowed of
Paul, and thinks he is getting out of his
difficulties, when he is putting one foot
into the mud to pull the other out. 1t is
hard to shave an egg, or to pull hairs out
of q bald nate hut they are both easier