s cog
in the money-distributing machine. They had not hesitated a moment. As
the peccaries of Mexico and Central America pursue blindly their prey,
so these small yelpers, Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, of the trade
world, had bitten at his heels persistently from the beginning of his
weakness up to the present moment. Toward these he had no malice. He
counted them but as he had counted his hunting dogs in better days. They
were narrow, but they were reckoned as men; they transacted business and
married the females of their kind, and bred children--prodigally--and
after all, against them he had no particular grievance. They were as
they were made and must be. He gathered a bunch of their bills
together, and decided that they should be classed together, not quite at
the end of the list.

The grade of each individual creditor fixed, the list was carefully
divided into five parts, twenty in each, of which twenty should receive
their letters and checks one day, twenty the next, and so on. Then the
literature of the occasion began.

The thoughtful debtor who has had somewhat continuous relations with a
creditor can, supposing he has even a moderate gift, write a very neat,
compact and thought-compelling little letter to that creditor when he
finally settles with him, if, as in the case of George Henry, the debtor
will have balance enough left after all settlements to make him easy and
independent. George Henry felt the strength of this proposition as he
wrote. In casual, easily written conversation with his meanest creditors
he rather excelled himself. Of course he sent abundant interest to
everybody, though apologizing to the gentlemen among the lot for doing
so, but telling them frankly that it would relieve him if they accepted
the proper sum for the use of the money, saying nothing about it; while
of the mean ones he demanded prompt receipts in full. That was the
general tenor of the notes, but there were certain moderate
extravagances in either direction, if there be such a thing as a
"moderate extravagance."

To the worst, the most irritating of his creditors, George Henry
indicted his masterpiece. He admitted his obligation, he expressed his
satisfaction at paying an interest which made it a good investment for
the creditor, and then he entered into a little disquisition as to the
creditor's manner and scale of thought and existence, followed by
certain mild suggestions as to improvements which might be made in the