any former experiences have made me question
the memory of friends and strangers to whom I have been of similar
assistance."

One week later the young man called to tell me he had not been able to
do more than keep himself sustained at lunch-counters since he called,
but hoped soon to obtain a position on a daily newspaper.

That was ten years ago. The young man sat in an orchestra chair the
other night at the theatre directly in front of me, and his attire was
faultlessly up to date. From the costume of his companion, I should
judge their carriage waited outside.

The young man did not seem to recognize me, and no doubt the incident I
mention has escaped his memory.

In all probability I was but one of a score of people who helped him
with small loans. Had the young man had been forced to appeal to the
society organized in every city for aiding the deserving poor, by being
sent disappointed from my door, the ordeal would have so hurt his pride,
that he might not have become the professional borrower he undoubtedly
is.

I could relate innumerable cases of a similar nature. One man, who was a
fashionable teacher of French among the millionaires of New York for
several seasons, appealed to me at a time of year when all his patrons
were out of the city for a loan to enable him to give his wife medical
treatment.

He was to repay it in the autumn. Instead, he came to me then with a
much more distressing story of immediate need and seeming proof of money
coming to him in a few months. To my chagrin, the loan I advanced was
employed in giving a feast to friends at his daughter's wedding, after
which he obliterated himself from my vision.

Financial aid lent a woman who soon afterward circled Europe, brought no
reimbursement. Her handsomely engraved card, with the "Russell Square
Hotel, London," as address, reached me instead of the interest money
which perhaps paid the engraver.

Money lent a young man to start a small business, was used for his
wedding expenses, and an interval of five years brings no word from him.
Poor and despicable beings indeed, become the victims of the borrowing
habit. It is the shattered faith in humanity, and the heart hurts that I
regret, rather than the loss of what can be replaced. I tell you these
incidents that you may realize how I have come to regard money-lending,
as a species of unkindness to a friend or relative.

It is only one step removed from giving a sick or overtaxed man o