I once fell into this bad habit myself; but a little incident, which I will relate, cured me. Not many years after I had attained my majority, a poor widow, named Blake, did my washing and ironing. She was the mother of two or three little children, whose sole dependence for food and raiment was on the labour of her hands.
Punctually, every Thursday morning, Mrs. Blake appeared with my clothes, “white as the driven snow;” but not always, as punctually, did I pay the pittance she had earned by hard labour.
“Mrs. Blake is down stairs,” said a servant, tapping at my room-door one morning, while I was in the act of dressing myself.
“Oh, very well,” I replied. “Tell her to leave my clothes. I will get them when I come down.”
The thought of paying the seventy-five cents, her due, crossed my mind. But I said to myself,—“It's but a small matter, and will do as well when she comes again.”
There was in this a certain reluctance to part with money. My funds were low, and I might need what change I had during the day. And so it proved. As I went to the office in which I was engaged, some small article of ornament caught my eye in a shop window.
“Beautiful!” said I, as I stood looking at it. Admiration quickly changed into the desire for possession; and so I stepped in to ask the price. It was just two dollars.
“Cheap enough,” thought I. And this very cheapness was a further temptation.
So I turned out the contents of my pockets, counted them over, and found the amount to be two dollars and a quarter.
“I guess I'll take it,” said I, laying the money on the shopkeeper's counter.