rd never thought. He, doubtless, on the
supposition of the merchant, went into good company, and acted with
the same prudence that had governed himself under similar
circumstances. But in this he was mistaken. The young man's habits
were bad, and his associates often of a vicious character. Bad
habits and bad associates always involve the spending of money
freely. This consequence naturally occurred in the case of Sanford.
To supply his wants his salary proved insufficient. These wants were
like the horse-leech, and cried continually--"give, give." They
could not be put off. The first recourse was that of borrowing, in
anticipation of his quarterly receipt of salary, after his last
payment was exhausted. It was not long before, under this system,
his entire quarterly receipt had to be paid away to balance his
borrowed money account, thus leaving him nothing to meet his
increasing wants for the next three months. By borrowing again from
some friends immediately, and curtailing his expenses down to the
range of his income, he was able to get along for two or three
quarters. But, of course, he was always behind hand just the amount
of three months' salary. At length, as new wants pressed upon him,
he was tempted to exceed in his borrowed money account the sum
received as his quarterly dues. This made it impossible for him to
pay off, when he received his instalments of salary, the whole
amount of borrowed money, and caused him to cast about for some new
resource. In balancing the cash account one day,--he had charge of
this,--he found that there was an error of one hundred dollars in
favor of cash--that is, there were on hand one hundred dollars more
than was called for by the account. He went over the account again
and again, but could not discover the error. For more than an hour
he examined the various entries and additions, but with no better
success. At last, however, a little to his disappointment, for he
had already began to think of quietly appropriating the surplus, he
found the error to consist in the carriage of tens--four instead of
five having been carried to the third or column of hundreds on one
of the pages of the cash book, thus making the amount called for in
the book one hundred dollars less than the real sum on hand.

For some time after this discovery, Sanford sat at his desk in a
state of abstraction and irresolution. He was vexed that the error
had been found out, for he had already nearly made up h