Suppose that a man in trade loses 500_l._ upon the business of 1000_l._, which is about the proportion in our Yankee's business or its results. Suppose that he wants to spend, and therefore does spend, the 500_l._ on himself. Is he bound to stop payment at the end of that partial experiment, and treat the problem as one therein solved? No. He may double his business and losses, and still keep right, in a familiar sense of that nice phrase. If he should trade to the extent of 2000_l._, and lose 1000_l._ upon it, he will be able to pay off the first credits out of the net proceeds of his second series of operations; and all the people who get their money--noticing, also, the activity of his business--will sound his praises as "a rising merchant," "an upright man," "a punctual tradesman." To live during the second series of operations out of them, they should, however, be extended to 3000_l._ or 4000_l._, instead of 2000_l._; and nothing is much easier than to do this. Keep on paying each bill as it falls due (no matter at what sacrifice,--by the forced sale of goods, or by discounts at any rate of interest), and there will be no difficulty about "widening your ratio of trade," until you are entitled to a place in that category of worthies which Mr. David Morier Evans has culled and put together in his work entitled, _Facts, Frauds, and Fallacies_. Some day the bubble will burst, I know; but the ball may be kept rolling for a series of years on this plan. It is just possible that a hitch may stop the machinery. There are accidents against which no human foresight can guard; and if the bright pleasant road to ruin gets blocked up, you may in the side paths encounter a policeman, who will lead you to a judge, and a prison, or a hulk. That I take to be one of the inevitable contingencies which any swindler will look fairly in the face--avoid it, if he can; and if not, then meet it with calmness and resignation. The Yankee did not, however, as I am told, understand this practical method of commercial swindling, and he would have inevitably come to grief if he had been an Englishman. The reader may as well bear that little fact in mind. A great man once observed that, although many persons resolved to live by their wits, the vast majority of those who tried the experiment got half starved by a scarcity of the material for that sort of existence.