Societies have already been established in the United States, the
members of which undertake to disuse mourning themselves, and to
discountenance the use of it by others. It is only, perhaps, by
association and the power of numbers that this reform is to be
accomplished; for individuals here and there could scarcely be expected
to make way against the deeply-rooted prejudices of the community at
large.
CHAPTER XIII.
GREAT DEBTORS.
"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? You are
going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who never
understood arithmetic."--_Sydney Smith._
"Quand on doit et qu'on ne paye pas, c'est comme si on ne devait
pas."--_Araene Houssaye._
"Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father! What lies, what meanness,
what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double-dealing! How in
due season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles: how like a
knife, it will stab the houeat heart."--_Douglas Jerrold_.
"The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is
composed of two distinct races, _the men who borrow and the men who
lend_. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those
impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men,
black men, red men, and such-like.
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