Reluctant sinners / by Sidney Fairway.

  • Fairway, Sidney, 1879-1947.
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Reluctant sinners / by Sidney Fairway. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sentimentalist, ‘what can I do ? I must pay the butcher and baker and candlestick maker or they won’t let me have any more.’ That’s easy. I know a gentle¬ man, a nice, kind gentleman in the City who advances money on very moderate terms, provided the security is good. And there’s the house, or pictures, or a life insurance, or something. ... So simple. The debt is transferred from someone who can’t take legal proceedings to someone who can. And I get ten per cent. “But some people have no sentiment, the sob-stuff just rolls off ’em. Then Theophilus Birnstrom turns on the righteous indignation. He has been empowered to act, to take whatever steps are necessary, to pursue them with the utmost rigour of the law. Perhaps they believe it, perhaps they don’t. But that’s where the personality comes in. A defaulter is generally a coward at heart. I weigh twenty stone ; you are six foot two with a mug like a prize-fighter and weigh, I should think, about fourteen stone. Bulk tells with such people. My books show that sixty per cent of such canaille give in at the first serious assault . . . as for the rest, well I just wear them down, or occa¬ sionally, if it seems worth while, sue them. Debt transference is the secret of my success, but it requires individuality to bring it off.” “It seems rather an unpleasant way of making money,” said Humphrey. “It is, it is ! A dirty business, as I told you, a damned dirty business. But necessary, like . . . drains and dustbins. After all, one can’t be too par¬ ticular in business . . . filthy lucre—that’s what money is. We’ve got to do the other fellow down or go down ourselves. Look at that question of bribery : why, it’s practically universal. ‘A’ makes . . . say, sparking plugs ; ‘B’ buys them for ‘C’ who sells motor¬ cars. ‘A’ comes up to town, takes ‘B’ out to dinner,