who orders what he knows he has no means of paying for; the pleasure
loving debtor, who can not renounce one single luxury for conscience'
sake; the well-meaning, lazy debtor, who might make "ends meet," but
does not, simply because he will not take the trouble; upon such as
these it is right to have no mercy--they deserve none.

To which of these classes young Ascott Leaf belonged his story will
show. I tell it, or rather let it tell itself, and point its own
moral; it is the story of hundreds and thousands.

That a young fellow should not enjoy his youth would be hard; that it
should not be pleasant to him to dress well, live well, and spend
with open hand upon himself as well as others, no one will question.
No one would ever wish it otherwise. Many a kindly spendthrift of
twenty-one makes a prudent paterfamilias at forty, while a man who in
his twenties showed a purposeless niggardliness, would at sixty grow
into the most contemptible miser alive. There is something even in
the thoughtless liberality of youth to which one's heart warms, even
while one's wisdom reproves.--But what struck Elizabeth was that
Ascott's liberalities were always toward himself, and himself only.

Sometimes when she took in a parcel of new clothes, while others yet
unpaid for were tossing in wasteful disorder about his room, or when
she cleaned indefinite pairs of handsome boots, and washed dozens of
the finest cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, her spirit grew hot within
her to remember Miss Hilary's countless wants and contrivances in the
matter of dress, and all the little domestic comforts which Miss
Leaf's frail health required--things which never once seemed to cross
the nephew's imagination. Of course not, it will be said; how could a
young man be expected to trouble himself about these things?