d
crowns. There is no record of its having been repaid, though Falstaff was
once surprised, in a moment of bitter humiliation, into admitting the debt.
And Charles Surface and Micawber--who can deny them a certain affection? I
have no doubt that Mrs. Micawber's papa, who "lived to bail Mr. Micawber
out many times until he died lamented by a wide circle of friends," loved
the fellow as you and I love him. I should deem it a privilege to bail out
Micawber. But Elwes, the miser--ugh! the very name chills the blood.

The difference, I suppose, proceeds from the idea that while the miser is
the soul of selfishness, the spendthrift is at bottom a good-natured fellow
and a lover of his kind. No doubt the vice of the spendthrift has a touch
of generosity, but it is often generosity at other people's expense, and is
not seldom as essentially selfish as the vice of the miser. It is rather
like the generosity of the man who, according to Sydney Smith, was so
touched by a charity sermon that he picked his neighbour's pocket of a
guinea and put it in the plate. I have no doubt that Lady Ida if she had
got Miss Dobbs's money would have scattered it about with a very free hand,
and would have contributed to the collection plate quite handsomely. But
she was selfish none the less. It was her form of selfishness to enjoy the
luxury of spending money she hadn't got, just as it was Elwes's form of
selfishness to enjoy the luxury of saving money that he had got.

The point was very well stated by a famous miser whose son has since been
in Parliament (I will not say on which side). The old man had accumulated a
vast fortune, but, in the Scotch phrase, would have grudged you "the smoke
off his porridge." (He died, by the way, properly enough, through walking
home in the rain because he was too mean to take a cab.) He was once asked
why he was so anxious to increase his riches, since his son would probably
squander them, and he replied, "If my son gets as much pleasure out of
squandering my money as I have had out of saving it, I shall not mind."
Both the hoarding and the spending, you see, were in his view equally a
matter of mere selfish pleasure.

But I admit that the uncalculating spirit that lands people in debt is a
more engaging frailty than the calculating spirit of the miser. I know a
delightful man who seems to have no more knowledge of the relation of
income and expenditure than a kitten. If he gets L100 unexpectedly he does
not l