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Show Going into Debt. In a recent lecture, Horace Grerlov, with much gooa sense, said : "Half the youm? men in th" country, with many old enough to know bettor, would 'go into j business,' that is, into debt to mor-j mor-j row, if they could. Most poor men arc so ignorant as to envy the mer-i mer-i chant and manufacturer, whose life is J an incessant struggle with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant 'shining,' and who, from month to , month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner or later overtakes most ncn in business, so that it has been computed that but one in twenty ol' them achieves a pecuniary success. For my own part and I speak t orn some experience I would rather be a convict iu a State Prison, a slave in a rice swamp tfian to pass through life under the harrow of debt Let no man misjudge himself unfortunate or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from debt Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, sus-picion, unjust reproach are disagreeable disagree-able ; but debt is infinitely worse than them all ; and if it had pleased God to spare either or all of my sons to be the support of my declining years, the lesson which I should most earnestly have sought to impress upon them is, never to run into debt. 1 repeat, my friends, avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence and famine. If you have but fifty cents and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it and live on it rather than owe any man a dollar I Of course, 1 know that some men must do business that involves risks, and must often give notes and obligations, and 1 do net consider him really in debt who can ' his hand directly on the means of a;, nig at some little sacrifice, on the side obligation, and dependence !i the other, and 1 say, from all such, ' -every youth humbly pray to God to ; i..-eive him evermore!" |