ON BEING HARD UP.

Northland Age, Volume VIII, Issue 26, 16 February 1912, Page 2

ON BEING HARD UP.

—f There have been a great many funny things said and written about hard-upishness, hut the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny to have a haggle over pennies. It Isn't funny to he thought mean and stingy. It isn’t funny to be shabby, and to be ashamed of your • address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty—to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensative man ; and many a brave gentleman, who would have faced the labours of Hercules, has had his heart broken by its petty miseries.

It is not actual discomforts themselves* that are hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a hit, if that were all it meant ? V.'hat cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers ? What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of hlr, hoots ? And what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off ? His shabbiness did not trouble him ; there was none of his friends round about to sneer at him. One becomes used to being hard up, as one beeopies used to everything else, by the help of 'that wonderful old homoepathic doctor, Time. "You can tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and the novice ; between the case-hardened man who has been used to shift and struggle for years, and the poor devil of a beginner, striving to hide his misery, and in constant agony of fear lest he should be found out. Nothing shows this difference more clearly than the way in which each man will pawn his watch. As the poet says somewhere — » True ease in pawning comes from art, not chance. Dew old ladies and gentlemen, who know nothing about being hard up—and may they never, bless their grey old heads, look upon the pawn-shop as the last stage, of degradation ; hut those who know it better are often surprised, like the little boy who dreamed he wait to heaven, at meeting so many people there they never expected to see. For my part, I think it a much more independent course than borrowing from friends, and I always try to impress this upon those of my acquaintance who incline towards “wanting a couple of dollars till the day after to-morrow.” But they won’t all see it. One of them once remarked that he objected to the principle of the thing. I fancy if he had said that it was the interest that he objected to he would have been nearer the truth ; twenty-five per cent, certainly does come heavy. There are degrees in being hard up. We are all hard up, more or less—for a thousand dollars, some for ten cents. Just at this moment I am hard up myself for a fiver. I only want it for a day or two. I should be certain of paying it back within a week at the outside, and if any gentleman among my hearers would kindly lend it to me, I should he very much obliged indeed.—Jerome K. Jerome.