It was at such a season that I entered the shaver's body. The knocks at my door were frequent, and the demands of my visiters to be brought into presence irresistible. What cared they for my pains and sickness?--they wanted money: what cared _I_ for my pains and sickness? --I was anxious to make it. I ordered my house-keeper Barbara (for it seems I was such a niggard I had no other servant) to admit all well-dressed applicants; for I scorned to deal with any other. The first person admitted was a woman, very good looking, but advanced in years. She kept a boarding-house, but, as Barbara informed me, had seen better days, having been the wife of a rich merchant, who failed, was absurd enough to keep his books so straight as to allow no opportunity for defrauding his creditors, surrendered up every cent of his property, and died a beggar, leaving a widow and six orphan daughters to lament his honesty. She was in some little flurry and perturbation of spirits, but I spoke with a blandness that astonished myself, until I found that this was always my practice with a customer whom I was not tired of. This restored her to confidence and garrulity. Her tale was soon told:--her boarders were all very fine gentlemen and ladies, and good pay; but the times were so hard, they were just at this moment compelled to pay with promises; with which coin her landlord was not so easily satisfied. She would not distress poor Mr. G., who owed her a hundred and fifty dollars, nor Mr. H., nor Mrs. I., who were all in a peck of trouble just then, but were well enough to do in the world--no, not she; she had heard I was so good as often to lend to people who wanted money for a few days, even when the banks would not, provided they were good and safe; and who was better and safer than she? With all her troubles, and the Lord he knew they were many and enough, she had always paid her debts, and she defied anybody to say the contrary: and so she hoped I would be so good as to oblige her with the small sum of two hundred-dollars, which, upon her honest word, she would pay as soon as she had the money.