The Wolfs Long Howl | Page 6

dollars, minus the
slight cost of certain immediate personal requirements. Then one
morning he stalked over to his little office, now clean and natty. He
leaned back in his chair again and devoted himself to thinking, the
persons on whom his mind dwelt being his creditors.
The proper title for the brief account which follows should be The
Feast of the Paying of Bills. Here was a man who had suffered, here
was a man who had come to doubt himself, and who had now become
suddenly and arrogantly independent. His creditors, he knew, were
hopeless. That he had so few lawsuits to meet was only because those
to whom he owed money had reasoned that the cost of collection would
more than offset the sum gained in the end from this man, who had,
they thought, no real property behind him. Their attitude had become

contemptuous. Now he stood forth defiant and jaunty.
There is a time in a man's failing fortunes when he borrows and gives
his note blithely. He is certain that he can repay it. He runs up bills as
cheerfully, sure that they will easily be met at the end of thirty days.
With George Henry this now long past period had left its souvenirs,
and the torture they had inflicted upon him has been partly told.
Now came the sweet and glorious hour of his relief.
It was a wonderful sensation to him. He marveled that he had so
respectfully thought of the creditors who had dogged him. They were
people, he now said, of whom he should not have thought at all. He
became a magnificently objective reasoner. But there was work to be
done.
George Henry decided that, since there were certain people to whom he
must write, each letter being accompanied by a check for a certain sum
of money, each letter should appropriately indicate to its recipient the
calm and final opinion of the writer regarding the general character and
reputation of the person or firm addressed. The human nature of
George Henry asserted itself very strongly just here. He set forth paper
and ink, took up his pen, and poised his mind for a feast of reason and
flow of soul which should be after the desire of his innermost heart.
First, George Henry carefully arranged in the order of their date of
incurring a list of all his debts, great and small--not that he intended to
pay them in that order, but where a creditor had waited long he decided
that his delay in paying should be regarded as in some degree
extenuating and excusing the fierceness of the assaults made upon a
luckless debtor. The creditors chanced to have had no choice in the
matter, but that did not count. Age hallowed a debt to a certain slight
extent.
This arrangement made, George Henry took up his list of creditors, one
hundred and twenty in all, and made a study of them, as to character,
habits and customs. He knew them very well indeed. In their
intercourse with him, each, he decided, had laid his soul bare, and each

should be treated according to the revelations so made. There was one
man who had loaned him quite a large sum, and this was the oldest debt
of all, incurred when George Henry first saw the faint signs of
approaching calamity, but understood them not. This man, a friend,
recognizing the nature of George Henry's struggle, had never sought
payment--had, in fact, when the debtor had gone to him, apologetically
and explaining, objected to the intrusion and objurgated the caller in
violent language of the lovingly profane sort. He would have no talk of
payment, as things stood. This claim, not only the oldest but the least
annoying, should, George Henry decided, have the honor of being "No.
1"--that is, it should be paid first of all. So the list was extended, a
careful analysis being made of the mental and moral qualities of each
creditor as exposed in his monetary relations with George Henry
Harrison. There were some who had been generous and thoughtful,
some who had been vicious and insulting; and in his examination
George Henry made the discovery that those who had probably least
needed the money due them had been by no means the most
considerate. It seemed almost as if the reverse rule had obtained. There
was one man in particular, who had practically forced a small loan
upon him when George Henry was still thought to be well-to-do, who
had developed an ingenuity and insolence in dunning which gave him
easy altitude for meanness and harshness among the lot. He went down
as "No. 120," the last on the list.
There were others. There were the petty tradesmen who in former years
had prospered