Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/48

 bill have to be paid; unforeseen calamities arise in their immediate families, for which they were not prepared, and for which they were not responsible. All these things must be taken for granted, and expected, but they do not indicate the usual nor the normal condition of affairs.

Other graduates fall into situations at once in which unusual opportunities for investment present themselves. They are thereupon loath to use their money for the payment of a debt which seems to many of them, now that the money has been spent, very much like putting their earnings into a dead horse. "I could have paid the loan a long time ago," one man frankly wrote me, "but I could get money nowhere else at so low a rate of interest, and my investments were bringing me so much more than this that I could hardly be expected to withdraw them just as I was getting a financial start to pay this debt. The University can afford to lose better than I can."

A few men take advantage of any chance to evade payment. I am reminded of one of these whom I had personally helped. He was not eligible for one of our regular loans. He was down financially, had a chance to get a good job in a distant city, but had no money to pay his transportation. I came to the rescue and took his personal note for the thirty-five dollars required to carry him to his destination. When I wrote him a year later suggesting payment of the sum borrowed, he replied that it was at that time inconvenient for him to pay; besides, he added, the debt was uncollectible since he was not of legal age when he signed the note. He was, therefore,