HOW TO BORROW.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2528, 22 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW TO BORROW.

TilK prince of borrowers is he who borrows to " blow it in," says a St Louis Globe writer. Whatever way he approaches the subject, he has but to declare the noble end to which he intends to devote the loan, and his engaging frankness is sure to get there. To borrow by note or by letter is a bad habit. It impresses the man who- gets the note with the belief that the sender has donbts of his own ability to ask the loan straight out. Again, it's so easy for a man to overlook these letters, especially if a man keeps a private secretary or a clerk to attend to his correspondence. This long range borrowing is no good. When the lender is out of the noble presence of the member of the great race he is not awed thereby. It is better to call on a man in propria persona and transfix him with the borrower's basilic eye, than to send a poor, cold, unsympathetic, letter to tell the tale upon which the necessity for a loan is based. It is, or was, a rule among the English aristocracy never to borrow from any friends. Every mau went to the Jews, as brokers were called. This rule or custom is an effete relic of an effetu social system. If a man in this free American country can't borrow from his friends, who can he borrow from ? One cannot borrow from strangers entangling him in a disgusting web of red tape, without worrying his brain with percentage and notes and mortgages, with all of which things true borrowing has nothing to do. The way friends are mostly seized up nowadays is by the amount they'll lend. Paying has nothing to do with borrowing as a fine art, unless in certain instances where it is part of a plan. For instance it often pays to borrow 10 dollars and then pay it back to inspire confidence, and then hit the man for 100 dol. and cut his acquaintance as a personage of no further usefulness. No artistic borrower threatens directly to pay back. He may hint at it vaguely, as a kind ot sop to the avarice of the lender, and if this hint brings forth a rejoinder, " Don't let it bother you," the borrower is absolved from all responsibility. The loan is no longer a lean.