In a great city, when your tea-kettle starts to leaking, you never borrow a whole one from your neighbor; you send to the shop at the corner and buy another.

In the country--Jack's country, I mean--miles from a store, you borrow your neighbor's, who promptly borrows your saucepan in return.
And it was so in larger matters: the old Chippendale desk with its secret drawer was often the bank--the only one, perhaps, in a week's journey.

It is astonishing in these days to think how many dingy, tattered or torn bank-notes were fished out of these same receptacles and handed over to a neighbor with the customary--"With the greatest pleasure, my dear sir.

When you can sell your corn or hogs, or that mortgage is paid off, you can return it." A man who was able to lend, and who still refused to lend, to a friend in his adversity, was a pariah.

He had committed the unpardonable sin.