order of their date of
incurring a list of all his debts, great and small--not that he intended
to pay them in that order, but where a creditor had waited long he
decided that his delay in paying should be regarded as in some degree
extenuating and excusing the fierceness of the assaults made upon a
luckless debtor. The creditors chanced to have had no choice in the
matter, but that did not count. Age hallowed a debt to a certain slight
extent.

This arrangement made, George Henry took up his list of creditors, one
hundred and twenty in all, and made a study of them, as to character,
habits and customs. He knew them very well indeed. In their intercourse
with him, each, he decided, had laid his soul bare, and each should be
treated according to the revelations so made. There was one man who had
loaned him quite a large sum, and this was the oldest debt of all,
incurred when George Henry first saw the faint signs of approaching
calamity, but understood them not. This man, a friend, recognizing the
nature of George Henry's struggle, had never sought payment--had, in
fact, when the debtor had gone to him, apologetically and explaining,
objected to the intrusion and objurgated the caller in violent language
of the lovingly profane sort. He would have no talk of payment, as
things stood. This claim, not only the oldest but the least annoying,
should, George Henry decided, have the honor of being "No. 1"--that is,
it should be paid first of all. So the list was extended, a careful
analysis being made of the mental and moral qualities of each creditor
as exposed in his monetary relations with George Henry Harrison. There
were some who had been generous and thoughtful, some who had been
vicious and insulting; and in his examination George Henry made the
discovery that those who had probably least needed the money due them
had been by no means the most considerate. It seemed almost as if the
reverse rule had obtained. There was one man in particular, who had
practically forced a small loan upon him when George Henry was still
thought to be well-to-do, who had developed an ingenuity and insolence
in dunning which gave him easy altitude for meanness and harshness among
the lot. He went down as "No. 120," the last on the list.

There were others. There were the petty tradesmen who in former years
had prospered through George Henry's patronage, whose large bills had
been paid with unquestioning promptness until came the slip of hi