inquiring for him, hanging about the house, and waiting to see him
"on business;" and some of these occasionally commented on the young
gentleman in such unflattering terms that Elizabeth was afraid they
would reach the ear of Mrs. Jones, and henceforward tried always to
attend to the door herself.

But Mrs. Jones was a wide awake woman. She had not let lodgings for
thirty years for nothing. Ere long she discovered, and took good care
to inform Elizabeth of her discovery, that Mr. Ascott Leaf was what
is euphuistically termed "in difficulties."

And here one word, lest in telling this poor lad's story I may be
supposed to tell it harshly or uncharitably, as if there was no crime
greater than that which a large portion of society seems to count as
none; as if, at the merest mention of the ugly word debt, this rabid
author flew out, and made all the ultra virtuous persons whose
history is here told fly out, like turkeys, after a bit of red cloth
which is a very harmless scrap of red cloth after all.

Most true, some kind of debt deserves only compassion. The merchant
suddenly failing; the tenderly reared family who by some strange
blunder or unkind kindness have been kept in ignorance of their real
circumstances, and been spending pounds for which there was only
pence to pay; the individuals, men or women, who, without any laxity
of principle, are such utter children in practice, that they have to
learn the value and use of money by hard experience, much as a child
does, and are little better than children in all that concerns L. S.
D. to the end of their days.

But these are debtors by accident, not error. The deliberate debtor,