The account which is made _debtor_, or bound, is said to be _debited_; that which is made _creditor_, or released, is said to be _credited_. All who receive must be _debited_; all who give must be _credited_. No cancel is ever made. If cash received be afterwards repaid, the sum paid is not struck off the receipts (or debtor-side of the cash account), but a discharge, or credit, is written on the expenditure (or credit) side. The book in which the accounts are kept is called a _ledger_. It has double columns, or else the debtor-side is on one page, and the creditor side on the opposite, of each account. The debtor-side is always the left. Other books are used, but they are only to help in keeping the ledger correct. Thus there may be a _waste-book_, in which all transactions are entered as they occur, in common language; a _journal_, in which the transactions described in the waste-book are entered at stated periods, in the language of the ledger. The items entered in the journal have references to the pages of the ledger to which they are carried, and the items in the ledger have also references to the pages of the journal from which they come; and by this mode of reference it is easy to make a great deal of abbreviation in the ledger. Thus, when it happens, in making up the journal to a certain date, that several different sums were paid or received at or near the same time, the totals may be entered in the ledger, and the cash account may be made debtor to, or creditor by, sundry accounts, or sundries; the sundry accounts being severally credited or debited for their shares of the whole. The only book that need be explained is the ledger. All the other books, and the manner in which they are kept, important as they may be, have nothing to do with the main principle of the method. Let us, then, suppose that all the items are entered at once in the ledger as they arise. It has appeared that every item is entered twice. If A pay on account of B, there is an entry, “A, creditor by B;” and another, “B, debtor to A.” This is what is called _double-entry_; and the consequence of it is, that the sum of all the debtor items in the whole book is equal to the sum of all the creditor items. For what is the first set but the second with the items in a different order? If it were convenient, one entry of each sum might be made a double-entry. The multiplication table is called a table of _double-entry_, because 42, for instance, though it occurs only once, appears in two different aspects, namely, as 6 times 7 and as 7 times 6. Suppose, for example, that there are five accounts, A, B, C, D, E, and that each account has one transaction of its own with every other account; and let the debits be in the _columns_, the credits in the _rows_, as follows: