Debt Part 2 from C. H. Spurgeon

Debt Part 2

Debt
C. H. Spurgeon writing as John Ploughman
From John Ploughmans Talk

Ever since that early sickening I have hated debt, and if I say some fierce things about it, you must not wonder. To keep debt, dirt, and the Devil out of my cottage has been my greatest wish ever since I set up housekeeping. Although the last of the three has sometimes got in by the door or the window, for the old serpent will wriggle through the smallest crack, yet, thanks to a good wife, hard work, honesty, and scrubbing brushes, the two others have not crossed the threshold. Debt is so degrading, that if I owed a man a penny I would walk twenty miles, in winter, to pay him, sooner than feel that I was under an obligation. I should be as comfortable with peas in my shoes, or a hedgehog in my bed, or a snake up my back, as with bills hanging over my head at the grocer's, and the baker's, and the tailor's. Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible. A man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life. We may be poor, and yet respectable, which John Ploughman and wife hope they are and will be; but a man in debt cannot even respect himself. He is sure to be talked about by the neighbors, and that talk will not be much to his credit. Some persons appear to like ov/ing money; but I would as soon be a cat up a chimney with the fire going, or a fox with the hounds at my heels, or a hedgehog on a pitchfork, or a mouse under an owl's claw. An honest man thinks a purse full of other people's money to be worse than an empty one; he cannot bear to eat other people's cheese, wear other people's shirts, and walk about in other people's shoes. Neither will he be easy while his wife is decked out in the milliner's bonnets. The jackdaw in the peacock's feathers was soon plucked, and borrowers will surely come to poverty—a poverty of the bitterest sort, because there is shame in it.

Living beyond their incomes is the ruin of many of my neighbors; they can hardly afford to keep a rabbit, and must needs drive a pony. I am afraid extravagance is the common disease of the times, and many professing Christians have caught it, to their shame and sorrow. Girls must have silks and satins, and then there's a bill at the dressmaker's as long as a winter's night, and quite as dismal. Show, and style, and smartness run away with a man's means, keep the family poor, and the father's nose down on the grindstone. Frogs try to look as big as bulls, and burst themselves. Men burn the candle at both ends, and then say they are very unfortunate—why don't they put the saddle on the right horse, and say they are extravagant? Economy is half the battle in life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well. Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known waste. If nil poor men's wives knew how to cook, how far a little might go! Our minister says the French and the Germans beat us in nice cheap cookery. I wish they would send missionaries over to convert gossiping women into good managers. This is a French fashion which would be a deal more useful than those fine pictures in Mrs. Frippery's window, with ladies rigged out in a new style every month. Dear me! some people are much too fine nowadays to eat what their fathers were thankful to see on the table. They please their palates with costly feeding, come to the poorhouse, and expect everybody to pity them. They turned up their noses at bread and butter, and came to eat raw turnips stolen out of the fields. They who live like fighting cocks at other men's costs will get their combs cut, or perhaps get roasted for it one of these days. If you have a great store of peas, you may put the more in the soup; but everybody should fare according to his earnings. He is both a fool and a rascal who has a quarter coming in, and on the strength of it spends five dollars which does not belong to him. "Cut your coat according to your cloth" is sound advice. Cutting other people's cloth by running into debt is like thieving. If I meant to be a rogue I would deal in marine stores, or be a pettifogging lawyer, or open a loan office, or go out picking pockets, but I would scorn the art of getting into debt without a prospect of being able to pay.