Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/53

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

the waiting car. I think I have not, more than ordinary men, found it difficult to resist their plausible arguments, but my experience with them has been varied and interesting. They are the harder to resist because their plea is so reasonable and their need so urgent. I have done business in one way or another with a good many of them within the last twenty years, and though the most of them have paid, so far as I now remember, only six have strictly kept their agreements. Until a week ago it was only five, but last week a man to whom I had lent thirty dollars, paid me three days before he had agreed to do so and surprised and almost shocked me by adding twenty-five cents for interest.

"Do you know where La Rue is now and what he is doing?" one of my faculty friends asked me the other day.

"He's married and has a good job in Peoria," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, he borrowed a hundred dollars from me just before he graduated with the understanding that it was to be paid within a few months, and I've not seen hide nor hair of him since. If he were hard up I did not want to press him, but if he is able to pay I thought I might as well have the money as he."

Few weeks go by that I am not approached by students with the request that I endorse a note for them at the bank in order that they may make a short time loan. In my younger and less experienced days I used occasionally to do this when I thought I knew my man, but after I had paid a few of these notes at times which were often annoyingly inconvenient to me, I came to the conclusion that I should under no