"
Both the hoarding and the spending, you see, were in his view equally a
matter of mere selfish pleasure.
But I admit that the uncalculating spirit that lands people in debt is a
more engaging frailty than the calculating spirit of the miser. I know a
delightful man who seems to have no more knowledge of the relation of
income and expenditure than a kitten. If he gets L100 unexpectedly he does
not look at it in relation to his whole needs. He does not remember rent,
rates, taxes, baker, butcher, tailor. No. On the strength of it, he will
order a new piano in the morning, buy his wife a sealskin jacket in the
afternoon, and by the next day be deeper in the mire than ever, and wonder
how he got there. And there is Jones's young wife, a charming woman, who is
dragging her husband into debt with the same kittenish irresponsibility.
She will leave Jones on the pavement with a remark that suggests that she
is going into the shop to buy some pins, and will come out with a request
for L10 for some "perfectly lovely" thing that has caught her eye.
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