of perplexity already suggested sufficient for the
time and strength of any man, and more than he would wish to undertake.
But experience alone could teach him in how many ways indulged customers
can and do manage to make the profit they pay so small, and the toil
and vexation they occasion so great, that the jobber is often put upon
weighing the question, Should I not be richer without them? Thus, for
example, some of them will affect to doubt that the jobber wishes to
sell to them, and propose, as a test, that he shall let them have
some choice article at the cost, or at less than the cost, now on one
pretext, and now on another,--intimating an indisposition to buy, if
they cannot be indulged in that one thing. If they carry their point,
that exceptional price is thenceforth claimed as the rule. Another day
the concession will be asked on something else; and by extending this
game so as to include a number of jobbers, these shrewd buyers will
manage to lay in an assorted stock on which there will have been little
or no profit to the sellers. To cap the climax of vexation, these
persons will very probably come in, after not many days, and propose
to cash their notes at double interest off. Only an official of
the Inquisition could turn the thumb-screw so many times, and so
remorselessly.

But we have yet to consider the collection of debts. The jobber who has
not capital so ample as to buy only for cash is expected invariably to
settle his purchases by giving his note, payable at bank on a fixed day.
He pays it when due, or fails. Not so with his customers: multitudes
of them shrink from giving a note payable at bank, and some altogether
refuse to do so. They wish to buy on open account; or to give a note to
be paid at maturity, if convenient,--otherwise not. The number of really
prompt and punctual men, as compared with those who are otherwise, is
very small. The number of those who never fail is smaller still. The
collection-laws are completely alike, probably, in no two States. Some
of them appear to have been constructed for the accommodation, not of
honest creditors, but of dishonest debtors. In others, they are such as
to put each jobber in fear of every other,--a first attachment taking
all the property, if the debt be large enough, leaving little or
nothing, usually, for those who have been willing to give the debtor
such indulgence as might enable him to pay in full, were it granted by
all his creditors.

N