John Ploughman’s Talk: Plain Advice for Plain People — Charles H. Spurgeon
WHEN I was a very small boy in pinafores and went to a woman’s school, it so happened that I wanted a stick of slate pencil and had money to buy it with. I was afraid of being scolded for losing my pencils so often, because I was a real careless little fellow and so did not dare to ask at home what was John to do? There was a little shop in the place where nuts, and tops, and cakes, and balls were sold by old Mrs. Dearson, and sometimes I had seen boys and girls get trusted by the old lady. I argued with myself that Christmas was coming, and that somebody or other would be sure to give me a penny then and perhaps even a whole silver sixpence. I would, therefore, go into debt for a stick of slate pencil and be sure to pay at Christmas. I did not feel easy about it, but still I screwed my courage up and went into the shop. one farthing was the amount; since I had never owed anything before and my credit was good, the pencil war handed over by the kind dame, and I was in debt. It did not please me much, and I felt as if I had done wrong, but I little knew how soon I should smart for it. How my father came to hear of this little stroke of business I never knew, but some little bird or other whistled it to him, and he was very soon down upon me in right earnest. God bless him for it. He was a sensible man and not a child spoiler; he did not intend to bring up his children to speculate and play at what big rogues call financing; therefore, he knocked my getting into debt on the head at once, and no mistake. He gave me a very powerful lecture about getting into debt; how like it was to stealing; about the way in which people were ruined by it; and how a boy who would owe a farthing might one day owe a hundred pounds, get into prison, and bring his family into disgrace. It was a lecture, indeed; I think I can hear it now and can feel my ears tingling at the recollection of it. Then I was marched off to the shop like a deserter being marched back to barracks, crying bitterly all down the street, and feeling dreadfully ashamed because I thought everybody knew I was in debt. The farthing was paid amid many solemn warnings, and the poor debtor was set free like a bird let out of a cage. How sweet it felt to be out of debt! How did my little heart vow and declare that nothing should ever tempt me into debt again! It was a fine lesson, and I have never forgotten it. If all boys were inoculated with the same doctrine when they were young, it would be as good as a fortune to them and save them wagon loads of trouble in later life. God bless my father, say I, and send a breed of such fathers into old England to save her from being eaten up with villainy
Ever since that early sickening, I have hated debt as Luther hated the Pope, and if I say some fierce things about it, you must not wonder. To keep debt, dirt, and the devil out of my cottage has been my greatest wish ever since I set up housekeeping. Although the last of the three has sometimes got in by the door or the window—for the old serpent will wriggle through smallest crack—yet, thanks to a good wife, hard work, honesty, and scrubbing brushes, the two others have not crossed the threshold. Debt is so degrading that if I owed a man a penny I would walk twenty miles in the dead of winter to pay him, sooner than feel that I was under an obligation. I should be as comfortable with peas in my shoes, or a hedge-hog in my bed, or a snake up my back, as with bills hanging over my head at the grocer’s, and the baker’s, and the tailor’s. Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible; a man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of life, as be in debt. We may be poor and yet respectable, which John Ploughman and his wife hope they are and will be; but a man in debt cannot even respect himself, and he is sure to be talked about by the neighbors, and that talk will not be much to his credit. Some persons appear to like to be owing money; but I would as soon be a cat up a chimney with the fire lit, or a fox with the hounds at my heels, or a hedgehog on a pitchfork, or a mouse under an owl’s claw. An honest man thinks a purse full of other people’s money to be worse than an empty one. He cannot bear to eat other people’s cheese, wear other people’s shirts, and walk about in other people’s shoes; neither will he be easy while his wife is decked out in the milliner’s bonnets and wears the dressmaker’s flannels. The jackdaw in the peacock’s feathers was soon plucked, and borrowers will surely come to poverty-a poverty of the bitterest sort because there is shame in it.
Living beyond their incomes is the ruin of many of my neighbors; they can hardly afford to keep a rabbit and have to drive a pony and chaise. I am afraid extravagance is the common disease of the times; many professing Christians have caught it to their shame and sorrow. Good cotton or stuff gowns are not enough nowadays; girls must have silks and satins, and then there’s a bill at the dressmaker’s as long as a winter’s night and quite as dismal. Show, style, and smartness run away with a man’s means, keep the family poor, and the fathers nose down on the grindstone. Frogs try to look as big as bulls and burst themselves. A pound a week apes five hundred a year and comes to the county court Men burn the candle at both ends and then say they are very unfortunate; why don’t they put twaddle on the right horse and say they are extravagant? Economy is half the battle in life, but it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well. Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known waste. If all poor men’s wives knew how to cook, how far a little might go. our minister says the French and the Germans beat us hollow in nice cheap cookery. I wish they would send missionaries over to convert our gossiping women into good managers; this is a French fashion which would be a good deal more useful than those fine pictures in Mrs. Fripper’s window, with ladies rigged out in a new style every month. Dear me! Some people are much too fine nowadays to eat what their fathers were thankful to see on the table, and so they please their palates with costly feeding, come to the workhouse, and expect everybody to pity them. They turn up their noses at bread and butter and end up eating raw turnips stolen out of the fields. They who like fighting cocks at-other men’s costs will get their combs cut, or perhaps get roasted for it one of these days. If you have a great store of peas, you may put more in the soup; but everybody should fare according to his earnings. He is both a fool and a knave who has a shilling coming in, and on the strength of it, spends a pound which does not belong to him. cut your coat according to your cloth is sound advice; but cutting other people’s cloth by running into debt is as like thieving as a sofa is like a couch. If I meant to be a rogue, I would deal in marine stores, or be a petty fogging lawyer or a priest, or open a loan office, or go out picking pockets, but I would scorn the dirty art of getting into debt without a prospect of being able to pay.