"'We have had some little transactions together; I think you will find here the correct balance in your favor. Please look up the matter in your books and see if I am right.' "He is dead long since. Honor to his memory, and may the blessings of an old man descend upon his children! "The inevitable day was close at hand, and even had I had the heart to make further struggle nothing could save me. My friends and enemies alike were intriguing for the spoils. I lowered my head before the storm and resigned. "I will not sadden you with the story of all I suffered; suffice to say that, fallen into the claws of pitiless creditors, I drank the cup of bitterness to the dregs. Apart from the ingratitude of my friends, I was not the sort of man to grieve greatly over my mere personal misfortunes. Even within the walls of the Bastille my gayety would not have deserted me; I might have danced to the grim music of the grating of my bolts. But my family! my family! Oh, the gnawing remorse which harasses the day, which haunts the long sleepless night, which suffers you neither forgetfulness nor rest, which wrenches the nerves of one's heart as with pincers of steel! "I believe, my boy, that with a few exceptions every man who can do so pays his debts; the torments he endures at the sight of his creditor would constrain him to this, even without the terrors of the law. Glance through the ancient and modern codes, and you will be struck with the barbarous egotism which has dictated them all alike. Can one imagine, indeed, any punishment more humiliating than that of a debtor kept face to face with his creditor, who is often a skinflint to whom he must cringe with fearful deference? Can anything be more degrading than to be obliged to keep dodging a creditor? "It has always struck me that civilization warps men's judgment, and makes them inferior to primitive races in mere common sense and simple equity. Let me give you an amusing instance. Some years ago, in New York, an Iroquois was gazing intently at a great, forbidding structure. Its lofty walls and iron-bound windows interested him profoundly. It was a prison. A magistrate came up. "'Will the pale face tell his brother what this great wigwam is for?' asked the Indian. The citizen swelled out his chest and answered with an air of importance: "'It is there we shut up the red-skins who refuse to pay the furs which they owe our merchants.' "The Iroquois examined the structure with ever-increasing interest, walked around it, and asked to see the inside of this marvelous wigwam. The magistrate, who was himself a merchant, was glad to grant his request, in the hope of inspiring with wholesome dread the other savages, to whom this one would not fail to recount the effective and ingenious methods employed by the pale faces to make the red-skins pay their debts.