The miser has no
friends; but the spendthrift has generally too many. We avoid Harpagon as
though he were a leper; but Falstaff, who, like Lady Ida, could "find no
cure for this intolerable consumption of the purse," never lacked friends,
and even Justice Shallow, it will be remembered, lent him a thousand
crowns. There is no record of its having been repaid, though Falstaff was
once surprised, in a moment of bitter humiliation, into admitting the debt.
And Charles Surface and Micawber--who can deny them a certain affection? I
have no doubt that Mrs. Micawber's papa, who "lived to bail Mr. Micawber
out many times until he died lamented by a wide circle of friends," loved
the fellow as you and I love him. I should deem it a privilege to bail out
Micawber. But Elwes, the miser--ugh! the very name chills the blood.
The difference, I suppose, proceeds from the idea that while the miser is
the soul of selfishness, the spendthrift is at bottom a good-natured fellow
and a lover of his kind. No doubt the vice of the spendthrift has a touch
of generosity, but it is often generosity at other people's expense, and is
not seldom as essentially selfish as the vice of the miser.
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