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“It’s no use to waste your time with him any longer. Just hand over the account to Simpson, and let him take care of it.”

The collector turned away, and the tailor came back to his customers.

“It is too bad,” said he, “the way some of these young fellows do serve us. I have now several thousand dollars on my books against clerks who receive salaries large enough to support them handsomely, and I can’t collect a dollar of it. There is Jacob Jones, whose account I have just ordered to be placed in the hands of a lawyer, he owes me nearly two hundred dollars, and I can’t get a cent out of him. I call him little better than a scamp.”

The father and son exchanged glances of significance, but said nothing. The fate of Jacob Jones was sealed.

“If that is the case,” said the father, as they stepped into the street, “the less we have to do with him the better.”

To this the son assented. Another more prudent young man was selected, whose fortune was made.

When Jacob received Lawyer Simpson’s note, threatening a suit if the tailor’s bill was not paid, he was greatly disturbed.

“Am I not the most unfortunate man in the world?” said he to himself, by way of consolation. “After having paid him so much money, to be served like this. It is too bad. But this is the way of the world. Let a poor devil once get a little under the weather, every one must have a kick at him.”

In this dilemma poor Jacob had to call upon the tailor, and beg him for further time. This was humiliating, especially as the tailor was considerably out of humour, and disposed to be hard with him. A threat to apply for the benefit of the insolvent law again, if a suit was pressed to an issue, finally induced the tailor to waive legal proceedings for the present, and Jacob had the immediate terrors of the law taken from before his eyes.

This event set Jacob to thinking and calculating, which he had never before deemed necessary in his private affairs. The result did not make him feel any happier. To his astonishment, he ascertained that he owed more than the whole of his next year’s salary would pay, while that was not in itself sufficient to meet his current expenses.

For some weeks after this discovery of the real state of his affairs, Jacob was very unhappy. He applied for an increase of salary, and obtained one hundred dollars per annum. This was something, which was about all that could be said. If he could live on four hundred dollars a year, which he had never yet been able to do, the addition to his salary would not pay his tailor’s bill within two years; and what was he to do with boot-maker, landlady, and others?

It happened about this time that a clerk in the bank where his old employer was director died. His salary was one thousand dollars. For the vacant place Jacob made immediate application, and was so fortunate as to secure it.

Under other circumstances, Jacob would have refused a salary of fifteen hundred dollars in a bank against five hundred in a counting-room, and for the reason that a bank-clerk has little or no hope beyond his salary all his life, while a counting-house clerk, if he have any aptness for trade, stands a fair chance of getting into business sooner or later, and making his fortune as a merchant. But a debt of four hundred dollars hanging over his head was an argument in favour of a clerkship in the bank, at a salary of a thousand dollars a year, not to be resisted.

“I’ll keep it until I get even with the world again,” he consoled himself by saying, “and then I’ll go back into a counting-room. I’ve an ambition above being a bank-clerk all my life.”