Page:Honest debtor, or, The virtuous man struggling with, rising superior to, and overcoming misfortune (2).pdf/11

. My friends were less zealous to serve than were my enemies to injure me, They agreed that I had been to 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 spendthrifts are treated until 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 alleging the weal- thy circumstances of my father-in-law, observed, that he was the person who out 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 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 leeson and example. An honest and inoffensive man, whose only crime was his dependence upon slight hopes, this man, hitherto esteemed and honoured, in an easy and sure way to fortune, all on a