The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-12-09

No doubt my young friend ought to have been proud of his old family connection with a famous college, and impervious to foolish pinpricks, but we'll he was not.
 And so appears.o on the scene the fa- miliar figure of the money lender. To say truth, he is not a very terrible person at Oxford or Cambridge. Most. ly he Is a tradesman with large amount of university custom and wide reaching friendships among college servants and fellow-tradesmen, so that his information Is plentiful and pre- else. l remember one at Oxford, close to several colleges, who advarc. cd about 40 pounds tmaking It forty guineas, perhaps under severe pres sure) on bill of 50 pounds, payable at three months. The terms might all most be called liberal for such a risky transaction, 7and everything would have been regarded as highly satisfactory by the shorrower-if ne could have got his money.
 But the leader, solemn person. with most serious views on the duties of young men at this seat of learning never had the money to advances and
 after the bill had been signed used to dole out five or six pounds week t4 l the exasperated borrowers during term time, and during vacation time | wrote soothingly at long intervals promising to pay the balance on the | first day of next term, The man would perhaps. have twenty or thirty of these 50 pound bills floating about in different colleges, and to each an9 lapp1icant for the money would say Isternly and reprovingly, ."Now, MT. l. l- paid you four pounds of this only three days ago; what can you possi- lbly want with more? Well, III lgive you another two pounds If you must have 1t; but, mind, no more this
 week" And the youth would retire with a vague helpless feleing that le' leally speaking, something was wrong about this method of negotiating Ithree months bill, but unwilling tc Iprolong the argument. l remempei Ithis person on one occasion only pay ling the last instalment of the loan
 about four days before the bill be. came due for repayment; and then
 on the day when 1t fell due, writing Q Hong and serious letter to the borrow
 CT to the effect that he never, on prin lciple, allowed moments grace in th' matter of repayment, as he considered lit bad for young men to countenanc'
 any unpunctuality in meeting theii
 obligations.
 The cardinal mistakes are made D, men in fixing the allowance to be patt Ito their sons at Aldershot or the uni
 versity. They take no count of |. fresh and costly pleasures to whicl Ithe newly released schoolboy will b' Introduced here, and they Ignore thu lpatent fact that the allowance ough .. | to be increased every year. The c
 penditure of a nineteen-year- olt
 freshman is, in the nature of things about half that of a twenty-two- o-year
 old man in his last year.
 Another radically wrong point il the situation is that this question, lik
 some other equally serious matters, l Inever honestly discussed between fathers and sons. The man announce
 to his son during his last term . Eton what allowance he is to have a Oxford begs him vaguely not to ge into debt, and as likely as not make 7 no other reference to the subject 10 three years, except the above-mention led fretful remonstrance whenever h has to pay the money Suppose tha man told his son, T am going to giv Iyou 300 pounds year at Oxford; uni lversity and college expenses wi , lamount to so much; sit down with m for an hour and tell me what you pro Ipose, more or less, to do with tn Irest." Such man would be able, af ter recovering from his amazement a
 the naive foolishness of the boys idea
 and proceedings, to give some yer useful advice.
 But it is much easier to let tt
 Iyoung man "buy experience,' an : then storm the house down when yo a are asked to pay for the consequent of this idle neglect of parental duty "A Sufferer" in London Mail.
 
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