Churning

“ It was as if these elements might really multiply in the transfer made of them; as if the borrower practically found himself—or herself—in possession of a greater sum than the known property of the creditor. The surrender, in this way, added, by pure beauty, to the thing surrendered. We all know the French adage about that plus belle fille du monde who can give but what she has; yet if Mrs. Server, for instance, had been the heroine of this particular connection, the communication of her intelligence to her friend would quite have falsified it. She would have given much more than she had. ”

“ When you have [Pg 199] got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment; but, as Poor Richard says, Creditors have better memories than debtors; creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times. The day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it; or, if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which at first seemed so long, will, as it lessens, appear extremely short. Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter. ”

“ If the ‘Racehorse’ and ‘Eclipse’ safely arrive, there will be a little something for you, perhaps, when the cargoes are sold; but if they do not, there will not be a penny to spare. But, worse than all, many of us creditors, Phillip, will have to bite our fingers! ”

“ You will go off with your six bushels of money, to the kingdom that I have told you of, and there enter the service of the king. When the time comes near for his debt becoming due you will be able to notice by his manner that he is ill at ease. You shall then say to him that you know well enough what it is that is weighing upon him—that it is the debt which he owes to the troll and cannot pay, but that you can lend him the money. ”

“ Said the merchant, “Pluck out thine eye, and I will pluck out mine: then we will weigh them, and if they are equal in weight, I will acknowledge thy truth, and pay thee the price of thine eye; but, if they differ, thou liest and I will sue thee for the price of mine eye.” Quoth the one-eyed man, “Grant me time;” but the merchant answered, saying, “I am a stranger and grant time to none, nor will I part from thee till thou pay.” So the sharper ransomed his eye by paying him an hundred ducats and went away. Last of all came the buyer of the chanders-wood and said, “Take the price of thy ware.” ”

“ I was now too proud to work as a mere journeyman, and I commenced business for myself; but I began without capital, and a gourd of sorrow hung over me, while I stood upon sand. I had some credit; but, as my bills became payable, I ever found I had put off, till the very day they became due, the means of liquidating them; then had I to run and borrow five pounds from one, and five shillings from another, urged by despair, from a hundred quarters. My creditors grew clamorous; my wife upbraided me; I flew to the bottle—to the bottle! ”

“ The merchant besought the countryman, saying: ‘You have ruined me. The cat, the pot, the hare, the knife, have all cost money; thanks to you, I am a beggar and a widower. If you remember the place where I threw you into the sea, drown me there, but let me have a stick, so that I may repair my fortune.’ To get rid of the troublesome merchant, the countryman agreed to fulfil his request, and so drowned him with a very long switch in his hand.2 [160] ”

“ The merchant was very glad. On returning to his house, he at once sent the dog back to its old master with a letter rolled under the collar, wherein he had written about the sagacity of the beast, and begged his friend to forget the loan and to accept another five thousand rupees as a present. When this merchant saw his dog coming back again, he thought, 'Alas! my friend is wanting the money. How can I pay him? I have not had sufficient time to recover myself from my recent losses. I will slay the dog ere he reaches the threshold, and say that another must have slain it. ”

“ Supply and Demand stand on the shore, one on one side, the other on the other side, of the life-boat, and they cry out to you, "Now, you pay us what we ask you for getting you to shore, or go to the bottom!" If you can borrow $5000 you can keep from failing in business. ”

“ Several merchants are now advancing considerable sums of their own property, rather than the service should suffer, by which I am sensible they must lose greatly, unless some method is taken to raise the credit of our coin, or a fund be sent to Orleans, for the payment of the expenses of this place, which should at once reduce the price of every species of provision; money being of little service to them, unless it would pass at the ports they trade at. ”

“ Anglo-Saxon writings frequently speak of money as given by weight. Our cut No. 53 is a representation of the merchant, or the toll-taker, seated before his account book, with his scales hanging to the desk. In the first of these cuts, a man holds the bag or purse, in which the money received for toll or merchandise is deposited. The cut No. 54 represents the receiver pouring the money out of his bag into the cyst, or chest, in which it is to be locked up and kept in his treasury. ”

“ I have formed the idea that by-and-by I may offer to act also as courier, relieving her of the bother of making payments, and so on. If I can work that, I'll deduct my own lot and pay it myself, the chances being that as she is careless about money she won't notice that I've done so, only thinking, perhaps, that I am a clever chap to run things so cheaply. ”

“ If someone repays a loan, he lays his money bag on the table in all the taverns in town and announces with a swagger that he's paid, and before he's out of the house there are three others waiting to borrow the money, one of whom even wants it without giving security! ”

“ Could I lend him half-a-sovereign? No; I could not. Could I lend him five shillings? I had not even that insignificant sum to spare. “Oh, it does not matter,” said my friend; “I can get the money over the way, I will just go and fetch it, and will be back in five minutes.” ”

“ Look up at those glittering stars overhead. I assure you solemnly, before those eyes of heaven, that if my father had accumulated a fortune, and had left it to me, I would not touch one penny of it, no, not one penny, for I know how it was got, by ways that I do not think straightforward, and perhaps even dishonest—by smuggling. ”

“ The paper of commerce alone maintains its vitality, and rises, athirst for payment, in three months. Before ninety days are over, the creditors, worn out by coming and going, by the marches and countermarches which a failure entails, are asleep at the side of their excellent little wives. ”

“ Prices, I’ll admit, are what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls after you’ve bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep—I’ve never myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human pride. But as to one family, there’s debtor and creditor, I hope ”

“ All along the line between the farm or mine or shop and the market, at every one of the tollgates for the collection of just charges, these big financiers, backed up by the big lawyers and the rascally public officials, had an agent in charge to collect on each passing article a little more than was honestly due. A thousand subtle ways of levying, all combining to pour in upon the few the torrents of unjust wealth. ”

“ Returning to England in the ship with me, he invited his old creditors to an entertainment, at which he thank'd them for the easy composition they had favoured him with, and, when they expected nothing but the treat, every man at the first remove found under his plate an order on a banker for the full amount of the unpaid remainder with interest. ”

“ I am his detaining creditor for seventeen hundred pounds."
"You talk as if you were the only detaining creditor," said Ralph, pulling out his pocket-book. "I am another for nine hundred and seventy-five pounds, four and threepence." ”

“ Men’s minds and eyes have been all upon you, and each homeward courier has been rifled of his budget at every port and village on his way by a hundred hungry speculators, as sharply as though he were a rich wanderer beset by footpads on a lonely heath. ”

“ Men let debts run, rather than call for them, and barter and exchange came into vogue again, the good housewife calling on her neighbor for a loan of flour or meal, promising to return the same in sugar or dried fruit whenever the need might arise. ”

“ Where the borrower gets, or hopes to get, it is just that the lender should share in the gain; but to him that borrows for his necessary food pity must be shown, and we must lend, hoping for nothing again, if we have wherewithal to do it, Luke vi. ”

“ To reduce a traverse, or day's work, to its exact limits.
RESOURCE. Expedient. A good seaman is ever a man of resources.
RESPONDENTIA. A loan made upon goods laden in a ship, for which the borrower is personally responsible; differing therein from bottomry, where the ship and tackle are liable. In bottomry the lender runs no risk, though the goods should be lost; and upon respondentia the lender must be paid his principal and interest, though the ship perish, provided the goods be safe. ”

“ I have known a man obtain credit for stopping a courier—waylaying him, I might rather call it—and taking by force a secret treaty from his hand, while the steady services of a life-long have gone unrewarded. ”

“ Raise money! Good heavens, I've raised every penny to be got from Jew or Gentile. There are the letters which came this morning. I haven't opened them [Pg 92] yet, the outside is quite enough; money-lenders' complaints, half of them, and the other half bills demanding immediate payment. If you've ever had dealings with the fraternity, you can tell what is inside by the look of the envelope. ”

“ Creditors are not slow when they see misfortune fall upon one, whom they were ready to bow to yesterday, to tread upon him to-day. Creditors and their ministers,—the judges, attorneys, sheriffs,—are all ready for a share of the pound of the broken merchant's flesh. ”

“ Dues for going in, dues for coming out, storage dues, and dues on the sale of everything that went out of the warehouse. If a horse was sold, there were dues on the brand and the written contract; if it was a pound of salt, there were dues on the weight.
Imagine a peasant coming into the market with the results of his humble toil. There must be a great deal of that to make up a rouble's worth. A horse, or two cows, or twenty geese, or ten sheep, or some ten tchetviérti of rye, or four sleighs. ”

“ Though the sacrifice of part of the cargo at sea cannot be considered a loan, it is a forced appropriation of it to the general benefit of those engaged in a common adventure, under a contract of affreightment ”

“ If he finds an urgent liquidation on ’Change, with the coincident phenomena of impaired credit instruments, he draws in his lines and waits. It makes no difference to him who is rocking the boat, nor why; experience has taught him that if it rocks, the time has arrived to go ashore. And this steady205 old merchant, I have no doubt, is but one of a numerous type. ”

“ So that when it shall please God to send the saide good shippes to you in safetie, you are to receive our said goods, and to procure the sales to our most advantage either for ready money, time or barter: having consideration that you doe make good debts, and give such time, if you give any, as you may employ and returne the same against the next voyage; and also foreseeing that you barter to a profit and for such wares as be here most vendible, as waxe, tallowe, traine oile, hempe and flaxe. Of furres we desire no great plentie, because they be dead wares. ”

“ We have sent you a skinner to be there at our charges for meate, drinke and lodging, to view and see such furres as you shall consider cheape and buye, not minding nevertheless, that you shall charge yourselves with many, except those which be most vendible, as good martens mimures, otherwise called Lettis and Mynkes. ”

“ A crisis is approaching and is near at hand, to which the panic and pressure of last year will be trifling in comparison. There is a larger sum of money, or rather a larger amount of credit, loaned out in this community, at the present time, than there ever was before. ”

“ A shilling, under pretence of an omnibus ride of a hundred yards, satisfies one ruffian; a second shilling stays the wrath of another, who in return mildly slides your portmanteau down a board into the steamer. ”

“ When creditors in a town get too mad and threaten to attach things, we invite them to go along with us for a few days, and get their money when we strike a paying stand, and we agree to furnish them a Pullman car and all they can eat. ”

“ One partner may sell and give credit, and deliver parcels of goods to what sum, or what quantity, he thinks fit, and to whom, and so, by his indiscretion, or perhaps by connivance and knavery, lose to the stock what parcel of goods he pleases, to the ruin of the other partner, and bring themselves to be both bankrupt together. ”

“ The plunder is disposed of immediately to ‘receivers,’ who always drive a good bargain, and if there is any plate or gold at once put it into the melting-pot. These receivers are the curse of large towns, where alone they are to be found. ”

“ Lady Crandall, here—and a better American never came out of the Middle West—has agreed to go bond for your passage money; all your letters of credit and checks will be cashed by treasury agents before you leave the dock at New York, and you can settle with the steamship people right there.
"No, no; don't thank me! There's the person responsible for your getting home." ”

“ The young man finding his neighbour in monetary difficulties, consents in an easy-going way to become his surety; he enters into a solemn pledge with the creditor, probably a Phœnician money-lender, that he will himself [Pg 80] be responsible if the debtor is not prepared to pay at the appointed time. ”