When I
was a boy I once paid a debt of honour, and it is one of the things I am
most ashamed of. I had played cards into debt and I still remember
burningly how I went flushed and shrill-voiced to my mother and got the
money she could so ill afford to give me. I would not pay such a debt of
honour now. If I were to wake up one morning owing big sums that I had
staked overnight I would set to work at once by every means in my power
to evade and repudiate that obligation. Such money as I have I owe under
our present system to wife and sons and my work and the world, and I see
no valid reason why I should hand it over to Smith because he and I have
played the fool and rascal and gambled. Better by far to accept that
fact and be for my own part published fool and rascal.
I have never been able to understand the sentimental spectacle of sons
toiling dreadfully and wasting themselves upon mere money-making to save
the secret of a father's peculations and the "honour of the family," or
men conspiring to weave a wide and mischievous net of lies to save the
"honour" of a woman.
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