The Five-Dollar Bill.Thefollowing story has been published in many of the newspapers, but it is so good, that we give it a place in our columns. It not only shows how proper and necessary it is to pay small accounts, but it shows the use of money. What a wonderful thing, that little pieces of paper may perform such important offices in society, as we see that they do, by the story of the “Five-Dollar Bill.”“Sir, if you please, boss would like you to pay this bill to-day,” said, for the tenth time, a half-grown boy in a dirty jacket, to a lawyer named Peter Chancery, and whose office was in Philadelphia.The attorney at length turned round and stared the boy full in the face, as if he had been some newly discovered specimen of zoology, gave a long whistle, thrust his inky finger first into one pocket and then into the other of his black cloth vest, and then gave another long whistle and completed his stare at the boy’s face.“Ho, ha, hum! that bill, eh?” and the legal young gentleman extended the tips of his fingers towards the well worn bit of paper, and daintily opening it, looked at its contents.“Hum! for capping and heel-tapping, six shillings—for foxing, ten and sixpence, and other sundries, eh! So your master wants me to settle this bill, eh?” repeated the man of briefs.“Yes, sir. This is the nineteenth time I have come for it, and I intend to knock off at twenty and call it half a day.”“You’re an impudent boy.”“I’s always impudent to lawyers, coz I can’t help it—it’s catchin’.”“Your eye-teeth are cut, I see!”“That’s what boss sentmefor, instead o’ the ’prentices as was gettin’ their teeth cut. I cut mine at nine months old, with a hand-saw. Boss says if you don’t pay that bill he’ll sue you.”“Sueme? I’m a lawyer!”“It’s no matter for that! Lawyer or no lawyer, boss declares he’ll do it—so fork over!”“Declares he’ll sue me?”“As true as there’s another lawyer in all Filadelphy.”“That would be bad!”“Wouldn’t it?”“Silence, you vagabond. I suppose I must pay this,” muttered the attorney to himself. “It’s not my plan to pay these small bills! What is a lawyer’s profession good for, if he can’t get clear paying his own bills? He’ll sue me! ’Tis just five dollars! It comes hard, and he don’t want the money! His boy could have earned it in the time he has been sending him to me to dun for it.—So your master will sue for it if I don’t pay?”“He says he will do it, and charge you a new pair o’ shoes for me.”“Hark’ee. I can’t pay to-day; and so if your boss will sue, just be so kind as to ask him to employ me as his attorney.”“You?”“Yes; I’ll issue the writ, have it served, and then you see I shall put the costs into my own pocket, instead of seeing them go into another lawyer’s. So you see if I have to pay the bill I’ll make the costs. Capital idea.”The boy scratched his head a while, as if striving to comprehend this “capital idea,” and then shook it doubtingly. “I don’t know about this; it looks tricky. I’ll ask boss though, if as how you say you won’t pay it no how without being sued.”“I’d rather be sued if he’ll employ me, boy!”“But who’s to pay them costs—the boss?”The lawyer looked at once very serious, and then gave another of those long whistles peculiar to him.“Well, I am a sensible man, truly! My anxiety to get the costs of the suit blinded me to the fact that they had got to come out of one of my own pockets before they could be safely put into the other pocket! Ah; well, my boy, I suppose I must pay. Here is a five-dollar bill. Is it receipted?—it is so dirty and greasy I can’t see.”“It was nice and clean three months ago when boss gin it to me, and the writin’ shined like Knapp’s Blackin’—it’s torn so of a dunnin’ so much.”“Well, here’s your money,” said the man of law, taking a solitary five-dollar note from his watch fob; “now, tell your master, Mr. Last, that if he has any other accounts he wants sued, I will attend to them with the greatest pleasure.”“Thank’ee,” answered the boy, pocketing five, “but you is the only regular dunnin’ customer boss has, and now you’ve paid up, he hasn’t none but cash folks. Good day to you.”“Now there goes a five-dollar note that will do that fellow, Last, no good. I am in great want of it, but he is not. It is a five thrown away. It wouldn’t have left my pocket but that I was sure his patience was worn out, and that costs would come out of it. I like to have costs, but I don’t think a lawyer has anything to do with paying them.”As Peter Chancery,Esq.did not believe in his own mind that paying his debt to Mr. Last was to be of any benefit to him, and was of opinion that it was “money thrown away,” let us follow the fate of this five-dollar bill through the day.“He has paid,” said the boy, placing the five-dollar bill in his master’s hand.“Well, I am glad of it,” answered Mr. Last, surveying the bank-note through his glasses; “and it’s a current bill, too. Now run with it and pay Mr. Furnace the five dollars I borrowed of him yesterday, and said I would return to-morrow. But I’ll pay it now.”“Ah my lad, come just in time,” said Furnace, as the boy delivered his errand and the note. “I was just wondering where I could get five dollars to pay a bill which is due to-day. Here, John,” he called to one of his apprentices, “put on your hat and take this money to Captain O’Brien, and tell him I came within one of disappointing him, when some money came in I didn’t expect.”Captain O’Brien was on board his schooner at the next wharf, and with him was a seaman, with his hat in his hand, looking very gloomy as he spoke with him.“I’m sorry, my man, I can’t pay you—but I have just raised and scraped the last dollar I can get above water to pay my insurance money to-day, and have not a copper left in my pocket to jingle, but keys and old nails.”“But I am very much in need, sir; my wife is ailing, and my family are in want of a good many things just now, and I got several articles at the store expecting to get money of you to take ’em up as I went along home. We han’t in the house no flour, no tea, nor——”“Well, my lad, I’m sorry. You must come to-morrow. I can’t help you unless I sell the coat off my back, or pawn the schooner’s kedge. Nobody pays me.”The sailor, who had come to get an advance of wages, turned away sorrowful, when the apprentice boy came up and said, in his hearing, “Here, sir, is five dollars Mr. Furnace owes you. He says when he told you he couldn’t pay your bill to-day, he didn’t expect some money that came in after you left the shop.”“Ah, that’s my fine boy! Here, Jack, take this five-dollar bill, and come Saturday and get the balance of your wages.”The seaman, with a joyful bound, took the bill, and touching his hat, sprung with a light heart on shore and hastened to the store where he had already selected the comforts and necessaries which his family stood so much in need of.As he entered, a poor woman was trying to prevail on the store-keeper to settle a demand for making his shirts.“You had better take it out of the store, Mrs. Conway,” he said to her; “really, I have not taken half the amount of your bill to-day, and don’t expect to. I have to charge every thing, and no money comes in.”“I can’t do without it,” answered the woman: “my daughter is very ill, and in want of every comfort; I am out of fire-wood, and indeed I want many things which I have depended on this money to get.”“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Conway,” said the store-keeper, looking into his money-drawer; “I have not five shillings here, and your bill is five dollars and ninepence.”The poor woman thought of her invalid child, and wrung her hands.“A sailor was here a while ago and selected full five dollars’ worth of articles, here on the counter, and went away to get his wages to pay for them; but I question if he comes back. If he does and pays for them, you shall have your money, madam.”At this instant Jack made his appearance in the door.“Well, ship-mate,” he cried, in a tone much more elevated than when he was discovered speaking with the captain; “well, my hearty, hand over my freight. I’ve got the document, so give us possession!” and displaying his five-dollar note, he laid hold of his purchases.The store-keeper, examining and seeing the note was a good one, bade him take them with him, and then sighing, as he took another and last look at the bill, he handed it to the poor widow, who, with a joyful smile, received it from him and hastened from the store.In a low and very humble tenement, near the water, was a family of poor children, whose appearance exhibited the utmost destitution. On a cot-bed near, lay a poor woman, ill and emaciated. The door opened, and a man in coarse, patched garments entered with a wood-saw and cross, and laid them down by the door side, and approached the bed.“Are you any better, dear?” he askedin a rough voice, but in the kindest tones.“No—have you found work? If you could get me a little nourishing food, I should regain my strength.”The man gazed upon her pale face a moment, and again taking up his saw and cross, went out. He had not gone far before a woman met him, and said she wished him to follow her and saw some wood for her. His heart bounded with hope and gratitude, and he went after her to her dwelling, an abode but little better than his own for its poverty, yet wearing an air of comfort. He sawed the wood, split and piled it, and received six shillings, with which he hastened to a store for necessaries for his sick wife, and then hurried home to gladden her heart with the delicacies he had provided. Till now he had had no work for four days, and his family had been starving; and from this day his wife got better and was at length restored to her family and to health, from a state of weakness to which another day’s continuance would probably have proved fatal.These six shillings, which did so much good, were paid him by the poor woman from the five dollars she had received from the store-keeper, and which the sailor had paid him. The poor woman’s daughter, also, was revived and ultimately restored to health; and was lately married to a young man who had been three years absent and returnedtrue to his troth. But for the five dollars which had been so instrumental in her recovery, he might have returned to be told that she, whose memory had so long been the polar star of his heart, had perished.So much good did the five-dollar bill do which Peter Chancery,Esq.so reluctantly paid to Mr. Last’s apprentice boy, though little credit is due to this legal gentleman for the results that followed. It is thus that Providence often makes bad men instruments of good to others. Let this story lead those who think a “small bill” can stand because it is a small bill, remember how much good a five-dollar bill has done in one single day—and that in paying aseriesof twenty bills, they may dispense good to hundreds around them.
Thefollowing story has been published in many of the newspapers, but it is so good, that we give it a place in our columns. It not only shows how proper and necessary it is to pay small accounts, but it shows the use of money. What a wonderful thing, that little pieces of paper may perform such important offices in society, as we see that they do, by the story of the “Five-Dollar Bill.”
“Sir, if you please, boss would like you to pay this bill to-day,” said, for the tenth time, a half-grown boy in a dirty jacket, to a lawyer named Peter Chancery, and whose office was in Philadelphia.
The attorney at length turned round and stared the boy full in the face, as if he had been some newly discovered specimen of zoology, gave a long whistle, thrust his inky finger first into one pocket and then into the other of his black cloth vest, and then gave another long whistle and completed his stare at the boy’s face.
“Ho, ha, hum! that bill, eh?” and the legal young gentleman extended the tips of his fingers towards the well worn bit of paper, and daintily opening it, looked at its contents.
“Hum! for capping and heel-tapping, six shillings—for foxing, ten and sixpence, and other sundries, eh! So your master wants me to settle this bill, eh?” repeated the man of briefs.
“Yes, sir. This is the nineteenth time I have come for it, and I intend to knock off at twenty and call it half a day.”
“You’re an impudent boy.”
“I’s always impudent to lawyers, coz I can’t help it—it’s catchin’.”
“Your eye-teeth are cut, I see!”
“That’s what boss sentmefor, instead o’ the ’prentices as was gettin’ their teeth cut. I cut mine at nine months old, with a hand-saw. Boss says if you don’t pay that bill he’ll sue you.”
“Sueme? I’m a lawyer!”
“It’s no matter for that! Lawyer or no lawyer, boss declares he’ll do it—so fork over!”
“Declares he’ll sue me?”
“As true as there’s another lawyer in all Filadelphy.”
“That would be bad!”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“Silence, you vagabond. I suppose I must pay this,” muttered the attorney to himself. “It’s not my plan to pay these small bills! What is a lawyer’s profession good for, if he can’t get clear paying his own bills? He’ll sue me! ’Tis just five dollars! It comes hard, and he don’t want the money! His boy could have earned it in the time he has been sending him to me to dun for it.—So your master will sue for it if I don’t pay?”
“He says he will do it, and charge you a new pair o’ shoes for me.”
“Hark’ee. I can’t pay to-day; and so if your boss will sue, just be so kind as to ask him to employ me as his attorney.”
“You?”
“Yes; I’ll issue the writ, have it served, and then you see I shall put the costs into my own pocket, instead of seeing them go into another lawyer’s. So you see if I have to pay the bill I’ll make the costs. Capital idea.”
The boy scratched his head a while, as if striving to comprehend this “capital idea,” and then shook it doubtingly. “I don’t know about this; it looks tricky. I’ll ask boss though, if as how you say you won’t pay it no how without being sued.”
“I’d rather be sued if he’ll employ me, boy!”
“But who’s to pay them costs—the boss?”
The lawyer looked at once very serious, and then gave another of those long whistles peculiar to him.
“Well, I am a sensible man, truly! My anxiety to get the costs of the suit blinded me to the fact that they had got to come out of one of my own pockets before they could be safely put into the other pocket! Ah; well, my boy, I suppose I must pay. Here is a five-dollar bill. Is it receipted?—it is so dirty and greasy I can’t see.”
“It was nice and clean three months ago when boss gin it to me, and the writin’ shined like Knapp’s Blackin’—it’s torn so of a dunnin’ so much.”
“Well, here’s your money,” said the man of law, taking a solitary five-dollar note from his watch fob; “now, tell your master, Mr. Last, that if he has any other accounts he wants sued, I will attend to them with the greatest pleasure.”
“Thank’ee,” answered the boy, pocketing five, “but you is the only regular dunnin’ customer boss has, and now you’ve paid up, he hasn’t none but cash folks. Good day to you.”
“Now there goes a five-dollar note that will do that fellow, Last, no good. I am in great want of it, but he is not. It is a five thrown away. It wouldn’t have left my pocket but that I was sure his patience was worn out, and that costs would come out of it. I like to have costs, but I don’t think a lawyer has anything to do with paying them.”
As Peter Chancery,Esq.did not believe in his own mind that paying his debt to Mr. Last was to be of any benefit to him, and was of opinion that it was “money thrown away,” let us follow the fate of this five-dollar bill through the day.
“He has paid,” said the boy, placing the five-dollar bill in his master’s hand.
“Well, I am glad of it,” answered Mr. Last, surveying the bank-note through his glasses; “and it’s a current bill, too. Now run with it and pay Mr. Furnace the five dollars I borrowed of him yesterday, and said I would return to-morrow. But I’ll pay it now.”
“Ah my lad, come just in time,” said Furnace, as the boy delivered his errand and the note. “I was just wondering where I could get five dollars to pay a bill which is due to-day. Here, John,” he called to one of his apprentices, “put on your hat and take this money to Captain O’Brien, and tell him I came within one of disappointing him, when some money came in I didn’t expect.”
Captain O’Brien was on board his schooner at the next wharf, and with him was a seaman, with his hat in his hand, looking very gloomy as he spoke with him.
“I’m sorry, my man, I can’t pay you—but I have just raised and scraped the last dollar I can get above water to pay my insurance money to-day, and have not a copper left in my pocket to jingle, but keys and old nails.”
“But I am very much in need, sir; my wife is ailing, and my family are in want of a good many things just now, and I got several articles at the store expecting to get money of you to take ’em up as I went along home. We han’t in the house no flour, no tea, nor——”
“Well, my lad, I’m sorry. You must come to-morrow. I can’t help you unless I sell the coat off my back, or pawn the schooner’s kedge. Nobody pays me.”
The sailor, who had come to get an advance of wages, turned away sorrowful, when the apprentice boy came up and said, in his hearing, “Here, sir, is five dollars Mr. Furnace owes you. He says when he told you he couldn’t pay your bill to-day, he didn’t expect some money that came in after you left the shop.”
“Ah, that’s my fine boy! Here, Jack, take this five-dollar bill, and come Saturday and get the balance of your wages.”
The seaman, with a joyful bound, took the bill, and touching his hat, sprung with a light heart on shore and hastened to the store where he had already selected the comforts and necessaries which his family stood so much in need of.
As he entered, a poor woman was trying to prevail on the store-keeper to settle a demand for making his shirts.
“You had better take it out of the store, Mrs. Conway,” he said to her; “really, I have not taken half the amount of your bill to-day, and don’t expect to. I have to charge every thing, and no money comes in.”
“I can’t do without it,” answered the woman: “my daughter is very ill, and in want of every comfort; I am out of fire-wood, and indeed I want many things which I have depended on this money to get.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Conway,” said the store-keeper, looking into his money-drawer; “I have not five shillings here, and your bill is five dollars and ninepence.”
The poor woman thought of her invalid child, and wrung her hands.
“A sailor was here a while ago and selected full five dollars’ worth of articles, here on the counter, and went away to get his wages to pay for them; but I question if he comes back. If he does and pays for them, you shall have your money, madam.”
At this instant Jack made his appearance in the door.
“Well, ship-mate,” he cried, in a tone much more elevated than when he was discovered speaking with the captain; “well, my hearty, hand over my freight. I’ve got the document, so give us possession!” and displaying his five-dollar note, he laid hold of his purchases.
The store-keeper, examining and seeing the note was a good one, bade him take them with him, and then sighing, as he took another and last look at the bill, he handed it to the poor widow, who, with a joyful smile, received it from him and hastened from the store.
In a low and very humble tenement, near the water, was a family of poor children, whose appearance exhibited the utmost destitution. On a cot-bed near, lay a poor woman, ill and emaciated. The door opened, and a man in coarse, patched garments entered with a wood-saw and cross, and laid them down by the door side, and approached the bed.
“Are you any better, dear?” he askedin a rough voice, but in the kindest tones.
“No—have you found work? If you could get me a little nourishing food, I should regain my strength.”
The man gazed upon her pale face a moment, and again taking up his saw and cross, went out. He had not gone far before a woman met him, and said she wished him to follow her and saw some wood for her. His heart bounded with hope and gratitude, and he went after her to her dwelling, an abode but little better than his own for its poverty, yet wearing an air of comfort. He sawed the wood, split and piled it, and received six shillings, with which he hastened to a store for necessaries for his sick wife, and then hurried home to gladden her heart with the delicacies he had provided. Till now he had had no work for four days, and his family had been starving; and from this day his wife got better and was at length restored to her family and to health, from a state of weakness to which another day’s continuance would probably have proved fatal.
These six shillings, which did so much good, were paid him by the poor woman from the five dollars she had received from the store-keeper, and which the sailor had paid him. The poor woman’s daughter, also, was revived and ultimately restored to health; and was lately married to a young man who had been three years absent and returnedtrue to his troth. But for the five dollars which had been so instrumental in her recovery, he might have returned to be told that she, whose memory had so long been the polar star of his heart, had perished.
So much good did the five-dollar bill do which Peter Chancery,Esq.so reluctantly paid to Mr. Last’s apprentice boy, though little credit is due to this legal gentleman for the results that followed. It is thus that Providence often makes bad men instruments of good to others. Let this story lead those who think a “small bill” can stand because it is a small bill, remember how much good a five-dollar bill has done in one single day—and that in paying aseriesof twenty bills, they may dispense good to hundreds around them.