Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848. Various
nothing. Several of his unpaid bills to eastern houses were placed in suit, and as he lived in a state where imprisonment for debt still existed, he was compelled to go through the forms required by the insolvent laws, to keep clear of durance vile.
At the very period when he was driven under by adverse gales, his young friend, who had gone into business about the same time, found himself under the necessity of employing a clerk. He offered Jones a salary of four hundred dollars, the most he believed himself yet justified in paying. This was accepted, and Jacob found himself once more standing upon terra firma, although the portion upon which his feet rested was very small, still it was terra firma– and that was something.
The real causes of his ill success never for a moment occurred to the mind of Jacob. He considered himself an "unlucky dog."
"Every thing that some people touch turns to money," he would sometimes say. "But I wasn't born under a lucky star."
Instead of rigidly bringing down his expenses, as he ought to have done, to four hundred dollars, if he had had to live in a garret and cook his own food, Jacob went back to his old boarding-house, and paid four dollars a week. All his other expenses required at least eight dollars more to meet them. He was perfectly aware that he was living beyond his income – the exact excess he did not stop to ascertain – but he expected an increase of salary before long, as a matter of course, either in his present situation or in a new one. But no increase took place for two years, and then he was between three and four hundred dollars in debt to tailors, boot-makers, his landlady, and to sundry friends, to whom he applied for small sums of money in cases of emergency.
One day about this time, two men were conversing together quite earnestly, as they walked leisurely along one of the principal streets of the city where Jacob resided. One was past the prime of life, and the other about twenty-two. They were father and son, and the subject of conversation related to the wish of the latter to enter into business. The father did not think the young man was possessed of sufficient knowledge of business, or experience, and was, therefore, desirous of associating some one with him who could make up these deficiencies. If he could find just the person that pleased him, he was ready to advance capital and credit to an amount somewhere within the neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars. For some months he had been thinking of Jacob, who was a first-rate salesman, had a good address, and was believed by him to possess business habits eminently conducive to success. The fact that he had once failed, was something of a drawback in his mind, but he had asked Jacob the reason of his ill-success, which was so plausibly explained, that he considered the young man as simply unfortunate in not having capital, and nothing else.
"I think Mr. Jones just the right man for you," the father said, as they walked along.
"I don't know of any one with whom I had rather form a business connection. He is a man of good address, business habits, and, as far as I know, good principles."
"Suppose you mention the subject to him this afternoon."
This was agreed to. The two men then entered the shop of a fashionable tailor, for the purpose of ordering some clothes. While there, a man, having the appearance of a collector, came in, and drew the tailor aside. Their conversation was brief but earnest, and concluded by the tailor's saying, so loud that he could be heard by all who were standing near,
"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," he said, "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 were not paid, he was greatly disturbed.
"Am I not the most unfortunate man in the world?" he said 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, and 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 humor, 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, what 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 the addition of 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 a director, died. His salary had been 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, or office 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 favor 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."
Painful experience had made Jacob a little wiser. For the first time in his life he commenced keeping an account of his personal expenses. This acted as a salutary check upon his bad habit of spending money for every little thing that happened to strike his fancy, and enabled him to clear off his whole debt within the first year. Unwisely, however, he had, during this time, promised to pay some old debts, from which the law had released him. The persons holding these claims, finding him in the receipt of a higher salary, made an appeal to his honor, which, like an honest, but not a prudent man, he responded to by a promise of payment as soon as it was in his power. But little time elapsed after these promises were made, before he found himself in the hands of constables and magistrates, and was only saved from imprisonment by getting friends to go his bail for six and nine months. In order to secure them, he had to give an order in advance for his salary. To get these burdens off of his shoulders, it took twelve months longer, and then he was nearly thirty years of age.
"Thirty years old!" he said, to himself on his thirtieth birth-day. "Can it be possible? Long before this I ought to have been doing a flourishing business, and here I am, nothing but a bank clerk, with the prospect of never rising a step higher as long as I live. I don't know how it is that some people get along so well in the world. I am sure I am as industrious, and can do business as well as any man; but here I am still at the point from which I started twenty years ago. I can't understand it. I'm afraid there's more in luck than I'm willing to believe."
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