Page:Honest debtor, or, The virtuous man struggling with, rising superior to, and overcoming misfortune (1).pdf/11

( 11 ) plore. My friends were leſs zealous to ſerve than were my enemies to injure me. They agreed that I had been too much in haſte to live away. They were very right, but they were ſo too late. It was at my entertainments that they ſhould have made ſuch obſervations. But you, ſir; who know the world, know, with what: indulgence ſpend- thrifts are treated untill the period of their ruin. Mine was now made public, and my creditors, being alarmed, came in crowds to my houſe. I was determined not to deceive them, and, making them acquainted with my ſituation, I offered them all that I had left, and only required them to give me time to diſcharge the reſt. Some were accommodating; but others, alledging the weal thy circumſtances of my father-in-law, obſerved, that he was the perſon who ought to have given me indulgence, and that in ſeizing the ſpoils of his daughter, it was their property he had plundered. In a word, I was reduced to the neceſſity of eſcaping from their purſuits by ſuicide, or of being ſhut up in a priſon.

'This night, ſir, which I paſſed in the agonies of ſhame and deſpair, with death on one hand, and ruin on the other, ought to ſerve as an eternal leſſon and example. An honeſt and inoffenſive man, whoſe only crime was his dependence upon flight hopes; this man, hitherto eſteemed and honoured, in an eaſy and ſure way to fortune, all on a