Words for the Wise

by T.S. Arthur

[...]industrious, and prudent as he would otherwise have been. We are all apt to require too much of the poor debtor, and to have too little sympathy with him. Let the hope of improving your own condition-which is the mainspring of all your business operations-be taken away, and instead, let there be only the desire to pay off old debts through great labour and self-denial, that must continue for years, and imagine how differently you would think and feel from what you do now. Nay, more; let the debt be owed to those who are worth their thousands and tens of a thousands, and who are in the enjoyment of every luxury and comfort they could desire, while you go on paying them what you owe, by over-exertion and the denial to yourself and family of all those little luxuries and recreations which both so much need, and then say how deeply dyed would be that dishonesty which would cause you, in a moment of darker and deeper discouragement than usual, to throw the crushing weight from your shoulders, [...].

164 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1851

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Timothy Shay Arthur was a popular 19th-century American author. He is famously known for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. Founder of the magazines Arthur's Home Gazette, Arthur's Home Magazine, and The Children's Hour, and editor of the Baltimore Athenaeum and Baltimore Saturday Visitor.