A Life's Atonement Author:David Christie Murray General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1880 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. HISTORY. Every man plays Hercules at one time or another. TT ASTINGS packed up such of his belong- A ings as seemed needed for a sojourn of a month at Boulogne, and sat down upon his bedside, with a big portmanteau in front of him and a big cigar in his mouth, to look out the train for Dover. The prospect of the jaunt was pleasant to him. As for his debts, they were such old friends that he would have been almost grieved to part with them. Natively, there was no honester man in Europe than this flippant and idle young gentleman. Tick at Eton and tick at Cambridge had dulled his moral perceptions -- that was all. It would be unfair to blame the man for the faults of a whole system. He had been steeped in credit ever since he had been a little boy. That everybody would be paid and exceedingly well paid one day or other, went of course without saying. The young gentleman justified himself after his usual fashion. ' The poet remarks with great felicity that there is no joy but calm. Very well, then. It is the business of every man to preserve his life from all fluctuations, and to hold himself at one level. Happy is the man who has no history. My highly superior father holds me in poverty at this time, and will one day burden me with great wealth. It is my double duty to get into debt. To-day's debt feeds yesterday's depletion, and provides a relief beforehand for the repletion of to-morrow. Aha ! 'Tis quaintly, wittily, and wisely put. Credit is the compensating balance of the whole system of human affairs. Good again.' Resuming the study of the time-table, suspended on behalf of these r...« less