before they are earned as it is to eat to-day the egg that is to be
laid to-morrow."

I do not dispute the egg part of this proposition, but I must protest
that if it is impossible for a man to anticipate the products of his
own labor, and to live them up in advance, it is quite possible for him
to anticipate the products of what some one else has already earned,
and to live them up most effectually. The only impossibility in the
premise is for this some one else ever to get his own again.

This statement should pass for an axiom, since it needs no proof. You
have had dollars of your own that have been appropriated thus, have you
not?

And of all habits that tend to demoralize a man, this one of dead-beat
borrowing is the worst. It will sap the last germ of manhood out of a
soul sooner than anything else I know of. It is one of the meanest
vices in society, and one of the most prevalent among a certain class
of young men.

I will not say that every person who asks to borrow money from a friend
without offering security is a dead-beat. Such a statement might be
somewhat wide of the mark. I only assert that I have always found it
so!

It was not without misgivings that Mr. Bright advanced "Dodd" the ten
dollars spoken of in the last chapter. But alas, poor man, he was yet
blind to the fact that whoever thus assists a person in the condition
in which "Dodd" now was does that person more harm than good.