Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/47

 without a family depending upon him. He was recalling old friends and old experiences.

"You know the President lent me two hundred and fifty dollars in my junior year," he said. "I suppose the debt's outlawed long ago."

"Haven't you paid it?" I asked him in astonishment.

"No," he replied quite nonchalantly. "He never pushed me, and so I just let it go. He's dead now, anyway."

There was no suggestion in his tone of obligation or gratitude or shame for having treated a friend badly; and the kindly old man who had done him the service had lived a life of sacrifice and died in comparative poverty, no one knowing how much of his savings had gone with the two hundred and fifty dollars which my college acquaintance referred to.

The actual reasons why the college borrower does not pay are usually the reasons of youth, for youth is optimistic, the future always looks bright; to-morrow is to be a more successful day than to-day has been. There is no coefficient of error introduced into his calculations for the future, and he seldom if ever prepares for the worst or for the unexpected.

Some men are thoughtless, careless, and indifferent. Having made an obligation, the fact passes out of their mind entirely until their attention is called to it. Under these circumstances they are quite unlikely to be in any position to meet the obligation because they have not prepared to do so.

Some, naturally, have ill-luck. Their wages when they get to work are lower than they anticipated; illness overtakes them, and a hospital bill, and a doctor's