The World Owes Me a Living
"THE WORLD OWES ME A LIVING."—The world owes you a living, does it? Then I will tell you what I would do. I would go to work and collect the debt as soon as possible, before it gets outlawed. I have noticed that it makes very little difference how much men owe me, if I do not attend closely to the business of collecting. There are men who owe me enough to make me richer than I have any prospect of being, but the trouble is they do not seem likely to pay; and I am of the opinion that the world is very much like them in this respect. I will tell you what I would do, if I thought the world owed me a living. I would get me a hoe, and go out somewhere, where I could get a chance at the world, and commence to dig, and drop in a few seeds here and there, as I had opportunity; and I think if the world really owed me a living, by sticking close to it with my hoe, I could collect the debt in the course of the season. This seems the readiest way I can think of to collect what the world owes. The fact is, there are so many creditors of this kind who claim that the world owes them a living, that some of them will lose their debts as sure as fate, if they do not begin early and work hard to collect their claims. The world is no doubt able to pay, provided it can have time. It generally takes the world about six months to get around, after the claims are presented and vigorously hoed in; but the man who delays and dallies about the matter, will find that, while the world may owe him a living, other people will have collected their claims before him, and there will be nothing left when he comes. "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing."—The Safeguard.