“‘Oh, you are a better man than you were three months ago!’ I answered him. ‘You happen to have run against the law, and it’s shocked and frightened you. But you are improving. Long ago you began to incur debts which you couldn’t pay, and you must have known that you couldn’t pay them. In that manner you became possessed of a large sum of money belonging to other people. It was used not for necessities, but to maintain a foolish display. That is the most heartless kind of fraud. I’ve much more respect for you now that you see your fault and confess it. I’m convinced now that you have a conscience, 114 and that you will be likely to make some use of it in the future. I’m particularly grateful to your wife. She has shown me that she is just a woman, and not an angel. I don’t believe that it was at all necessary for you to have groveled in aristocratic crimes in order to win her heart. The yacht cruise and the tandem and the violets and the Fifth Avenue clothes and the ton of candy were quite superfluous. You needed only to tell her the truth, like a man, and say that you loved her.’
“‘It is true, Roger,’ said the girl as she broke down again.
“‘I did it all to please you, dear,’ the boy answered, in his effort to comfort her.
“‘And it did please me,’ she said, brokenly, ‘but I know that I should have been better pleased if––’
“She hesitated, and I expressed her thought for her:
“‘If he had centralized on manhood. There is something sweeter than violets 115 and grander than fine raiment in a sort of character that a boy should offer to the girl he loves.’
“They were both convinced. It was easy to see that now, and I promised to do what I could for them.
“I got a schedule of the young man’s debts and found that he owed, among other debts, six thousand dollars to sundry shops and department stores in New York––the purchases of his wife in the eight months of their wedded life. I asked her how it could have happened.
“‘He opened accounts for me and said I could buy what I wanted, and you know it is so easy to say “Charge it,’” was her answer. ‘Every one has accounts these days, and they tempt you to buy more than you need.’
“‘It is true. Credit is the latest ally of the devil. It is the great tempter. It is responsible for half the extravagance of modern life. The two words ‘charge it’ 116 have done more harm than any others in the language. They have led to a vast amount of unnecessary buying. They have developed a talent for extravagance in our people. They have created a large and growing sisterhood and brotherhood of dead-beats. They have led to bankruptcy and slow pay and bad debts. They have raised the cost of everything we require because the tradesman compels us to pay his uncollected accounts. They are added to your bills and mine, and the merchant prince suffers no impairment of his fortune.