 | Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family |  |
PAYING AN OLD DEBT.
Working out a debt is often called “working a dead
horse,” and we think not inaptly, the more especially
when a man is poor, with a family depending upon him
for support; then a pickaxe becomes a weary thing, and
every shovel-full of dirt weighs four times as much as
when the heart of the laborer is cheered by the hope of
the dollar ahead. But it is well to pay one's debts;
though it is far better not to owe anything, — a piece of
advice that Saint Paul utters with great earnestness, as
if he were practically sensible of the disadvantage of
indebtedness.
A man who had run up a long score at a shop for
liquor, cigars, and other creature comforts, found himself
utterly unable to pay a stiver of it. In vain was he urged
to pay the bill, and in vain was he threatened if he
did n't; he had n't any money, — the true secret of his
getting in debt in the first place, — and the creditor gave
it up. At last he thought he would compromise the
matter, and let the man work the debt out. The creditor
had a large pile of wood in his barn, several cords
of it, nicely sawed and split, and he forthwith set the
debtor at work to throw the wood into the street and
then pile it back again, at the rate of a shilling an hour,
until the whole debt should be wiped out. The man
took hold with a will, and, in a short time the wood was
all in the street; then it went back with equal celerity,
what it could mean. Some charitably intimated that he
was crazy, and others, equally charitable, said he was
drunk. He toiled on thus the whole day, throwing the
wood back and forth, but every hour seemed full sixty
minutes longer than its predecessor, as he watched the
clock on the old church in the neighborhood. He was
working a dead horse, and it was hard making him go.
But the longest road must have an end, and the hour
neared when the labor and debt would cease together,
and, as the hammer of the clock told the hour of his
release, the freed man threw the last stick of wood into
the street with a shout of triumph. The shout brought
the owner of the wood to the door, who found his late
debtor putting on his coat to go away.
“Halloo!” said he, “you are not going away without
putting the wood back again, are you?”
“I 'll put it back again for a shilling an hour,” said
the man.
The proprietor of the wood saw that he had been done,
but good-naturedly told his late debtor to go ahead and
put it back. He went about it; but, strange to say, it
took him just three times as long to put it back as it did
to throw it out.
Mrs. Partington having been asked what the consequences
would be if an irresistible should come in
contact with an immovable body, replied that she thought
one or t' other of 'em would get hurt.
| Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family | |