Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are
sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that
some of you who read this are unable to pay for all the
dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and
shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have
come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing
your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and
sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted
by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business
and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by
the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins
were made of brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay,
tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to
get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses;
lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell
of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous
generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you
make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import
his groceries for him; making yourselves sick,that you may lay
up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away
in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more
safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much
or how little.