The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-10-07
TFRMs.( $1.OOp per year. in advance
1""o Six Months so cents.

been built from borrowed dollars.
But there are two kinds of borrowed
money: money borrowed for the pur-
pose of starting or keeping up legiti-
mate enterprise or expense, and money
borrowed to get that which you can do
without. The first is right; the other
is wrong. If you have money enough
of your own to buy coat, however
plain and still borrow money for a
dandy's outfit, you have taken the first
revolution of the wheel down grade.
Borrowing for necessities may be we'll,
but borrowing for luxuries tips your
prospects over in the wrong direction.
The bible distinctly says: :"The borrower
is the servant of the lender" 1t is
bad state of things when you have to
so down some other street to escape
meeting some one you owe. If all
men knew what is the despotism of
being in debt more of them would
keep out of it. What did debt do to
Lord Bacon with a mind towering
above the centuries? 1t induced him
to take bribes and convict himself as a
criminal before all ages. What did
debt do to Walter Scott? Broken
hearted at Abbotsford, he kept writing
until his hand gave out from paralysis,
to keep the sheriff away from his
pictures and statuary. Better for him
if he had minded the maxim which he
had chiseled over the fireplace at
Abbotsford: "Waste not, want not"
The trouble is, my friends, that people
do not understand the ethics of going
into debt and that if you purchase
goods with no expectation of paying
for them, or go into debts which you
cannot meet you steal just so much
money. If l go into grocery store
and buy sugars and coffees and meats
with no capacity to pay for them, or
no intention of paying for them, l am
more dishonest than if l go into the
store and when the grOcer's face is
turned the other way fill my pockets
with the articles of merchandise and
carry off a ham. In the one case l
take the merchants time and l take
the time of his messenger to transfer
the goods to my house; in the other l
take none of the time of the merchant
as wait upon myself, and l transfer
the goods without any trouble to him.
In other words, sneak thief is no
worse than man who contracts debts
he never expects to pay. Yet in all
our cities there are families who move
every May day to get into proximity to
other grocers and meat shops and
apothecaries. They owe everybody
within half mile of where they now
live, and next May they will move into
distant part of the city, finding
new lot of victims. Meanwhile, the
honest family in the new house is
bothered day by day by the knocking
at the door by disappointed bakers and
butchers and dry goods dealers, and
newspaper carriers and you are asked
"where your predecessor now lives?
You do not know; it was arranged you
should not know. Meanwhile your
predecessor has gone to some distant
part of the city, and the people who
have anything to sell have sent their
wagons and stopped there to solicit
the valuable custom of the new neigh
Dor. And he, the new neighbor, with
great complacency and an air of afflu
ence, orders the finest steaks and the
highest-priced sugars, and the best of
the canned goods, and perhaps all the
newspapers, and the debts will keep on
accumulating until he gets his goods
on the thirtieth of next April in the
furniture cart. No wonder that so
many of our merchants fail in business.
They are swindled into bankruptcy by
these wandering Arabs, these nomads
of city life who cheat the grocer out of
the green apples which make them
sick, the physician who attends them
during their distress and the under.
taker who fits them out for their de.
parture from the neighborhood where
they owe everybody when they pay the
debt of nature, the only debt they ever
do nav NJ