The Wolfs Long Howl | Page 7

through George Henry's patronage, whose large bills had
been paid with unquestioning promptness until came the slip of his cog
in the money-distributing machine. They had not hesitated a moment.
As the peccaries of Mexico and Central America pursue blindly their
prey, so these small yelpers, Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, of the trade
world, had bitten at his heels persistently from the beginning of his
weakness up to the present moment. Toward these he had no malice.
He counted them but as he had counted his hunting dogs in better days.
They were narrow, but they were reckoned as men; they transacted
business and married the females of their kind, and bred
children--prodigally--and after all, against them he had no particular
grievance. They were as they were made and must be. He gathered a

bunch of their bills together, and decided that they should be classed
together, not quite at the end of the list.
The grade of each individual creditor fixed, the list was carefully
divided into five parts, twenty in each, of which twenty should receive
their letters and checks one day, twenty the next, and so on. Then the
literature of the occasion began.
The thoughtful debtor who has had somewhat continuous relations with
a creditor can, supposing he has even a moderate gift, write a very neat,
compact and thought-compelling little letter to that creditor when he
finally settles with him, if, as in the case of George Henry, the debtor
will have balance enough left after all settlements to make him easy
and independent. George Henry felt the strength of this proposition as
he wrote. In casual, easily written conversation with his meanest
creditors he rather excelled himself. Of course he sent abundant interest
to everybody, though apologizing to the gentlemen among the lot for
doing so, but telling them frankly that it would relieve him if they
accepted the proper sum for the use of the money, saying nothing about
it; while of the mean ones he demanded prompt receipts in full. That
was the general tenor of the notes, but there were certain moderate
extravagances in either direction, if there be such a thing as a
"moderate extravagance."
To the worst, the most irritating of his creditors, George Henry indicted
his masterpiece. He admitted his obligation, he expressed his
satisfaction at paying an interest which made it a good investment for
the creditor, and then he entered into a little disquisition as to the
creditor's manner and scale of thought and existence, followed by
certain mild suggestions as to improvements which might be made in
the character under observation. He pledged himself to return at any
time the favor extended him, and promised also never to mention it
after it had been extended. He apologized for the lack of further and
more adequate treatment of the subject, expressing his conviction that
the more delicate shades of meaning which might be employed after a
more extended study would not be comprehended by the person
addressed.

George Henry--it is with regret that it is admitted--had a wild hope that
this creditor would become enraged to the point of making a personal
assault on him from this simple summing up of affairs, because he had
an imbedded desire to lick, or anyway try to lick, this particular person,
could he be provoked into an encounter. It is as well to say here that his
dream was never gratified. The nagging man is never a fighting man.
And so the Feast of the Paying of Bills went on to its conclusion. It was
a season of intense enjoyment for George Henry. When it was ended,
having money, having also a notable gift as a shot, he fled to the
northern woods, where grouse and deer fell plentifully before him, and
then after a month he returned to enjoy life at ease.
It was upon his return home that George Henry Harrison, well-to-do
and content, learned something which for a time made him think this
probably the hollowest of all the worlds which swing around the sun.
He came back, vigorous and hopeful of spirit, with the strength of the
woods and of nature in him, and with open heart and hand ready to
greet his fellow-beings, glad to be one with them. The thing which
smote him was odd. It was that he found himself a stranger among the
fellow-beings he had come to meet. He found himself still a Selkirk of
the world of trade and traffic and transfer of thought and well-wishing
and strong-doing and of all social life. He was like a strange bird, like
an albatross blown into unaccustomed seas, alighting upon an island
where albatrosses were unknown.
He found his office as bright and attractive as urgently and sternly
directed servitude could make it.