Chapter 3: It Is Hard For An Empty Sack To Stand Upright

Chapter 3.
It is Hard for an Empty Sack to Stand Upright

Sam may try a fine while before he will make one of his empty sacks stand upright. If he were not half daft he would have left off that job before he begun it, and not have been an Irishman either. He will come to his wits' end before he sets the sack on its end. The old proverb, printed at the top, was made by a man who had burned his fingers with debtors, and it just means that when folks have no money and are over head and ears in debt, as often as not they leave off being upright, and tumble over one way or another. He that has but four and spends five will soon need no purse, but he will most likely begin to use his wits to keep himself afloat, and take to all sorts of dodges to manage it.

Nine times out of ten they begin by making promises to pay on a certain day when it is certain they have nothing to pay with. They are as bold at fixing the time as if they had my lord's income. The day comes round as sure as Christmas, and then they haven't a cent in the world, and so they make all sorts of excuses and begin to promise again.

Those who are quick to promise are generally slow to perform. They promise mountains and perform mole-hills. He who gives you fair words and nothing more feeds you with an empty spoon, and hungry creditors soon grow tired of that game. Promises don't fill the belly. Promising men are not great favorites if they are not performing men. When such a fellow is called a liar he thinks he is hardly done by: and yet he is so, as sure as eggs are eggs, and there's no denying it, as the boy said when the gardener caught him up the cherry-tree. People don't think much of a man's piety when his promises are like piecrust, made to be broken: they generally turn crusty themselves and give him a bit of their mind. Like old Tusser, who said of such an one:

"His promise to trust to is slippery as ice, His credit much like to the chance of the dice."

Creditors have better memories than debtors, and when they have been taken in more than once they think it is time that the fox went to the furrier, and they had their share of his skin. Waiting for your money does not sweeten a man's temper, and a few lies on the top of it turn the milk of human kindness into sour stuff. Hungry dogs will eat dirty puddings, and people who are hard up very often do dirty actions. Blessed be God, there is some cloth still made which will not shrink in the wetting, and some honesty which holds on under misfortune; but too often debt is the worst kind of poverty, because it breeds deceit. Men do not like to face their circumstances, and so they turn their backs on the truth. They try all sorts of schemes to get out of their difficulties, and like the Banbury tinker, they make three holes in the saucepan to mend one. To avoid a brook they leap into a river, for they borrow at ruinous interest to pay off those who squeeze them tight. By ordering goods which they cannot pay for, and selling them for whatever they can get, they may put off one evil day, but they only bring on another. One trick needs another trick to back it up, and thus they go on over shoes and then over boots. Hoping that something will turn up, they go on raking for the moon in a ditch, and all the luck that comes to them is like Johnny Toy's, who lost a quarter and found a five-cent loaf. Any short cut tempts them out of the high-road of honesty, and they find after a while that they have gone miles out of their way. At last people fight shy of them, and say that they are as honest as a cat when the meat is out of reach, and they murmur that plain dealing is "dead, and died without issue. Who wonders? People who are bitten once are in no hurry to put their fingers into the same mouth again. You don't trust a horse's heel after it has kicked you, nor lean on a staff which has once broken. Too much cunning overdoes its work, and in the long run there is no craft which is so wise as simple honesty.

I would not be hard on a poor fellow, nor pour water on a drowned mouse. If through misfortune the man can't pay, why, he can't pay, and let him say so, and do the honest thing with what little he has, and kind hearts will feel for him. A wise man does at first what a fool does at last. The worst of it is that debtors will hold on long after it is honest to do so, and they try to persuade themselves that their ship will come home, or their cats will grow into cows. It is hard to sail over the sea in an egg shell, and it is not much easier to pay your way when your capital is all gone. Out of nothing comes nothing, and you may turn your nothing over a long time before it will grow into a five dollar bill. The way to Babylon will never bring you to Jerusalem, and borrowing, and diving deeper into debt, will never get a man out of difficulties.

There is no need to lose your character because you lose your money. Some people jump out of the frying-pan into the fire; for fear of being paupers they become rogues. You find them slippery customers; you can't bind them to anything; you think you have got them, but you can't hold them any longer than you can keep a cat in a wheelbarrow. They can jump over nine hedges, and nine more after that. They always deceive you, and then plead the badness of the times or the sickness of their family. You cannot help them, for there's no telling where they are. It is always best to let them come to the end of their tether, for when they are cleaned out of their old rubbish they may perhaps begin in a better fashion. You cannot get out of the sack what is not in it, and when a man's purse is as bare as the back of your hand, the longer you patch him up the barer he will become. Like Bill Jones, who cut up his coat to patch his waistcoat, and then used his trousers to mend his coat, and at last had to lie in bed for want of a rag to cover him.

Let the poor, unfortunate tradesman hold to his honesty as he would to his life. The straight road is the shortest cut. Better break stones on the road than break the law of God. Faith in God should save a Christian man from anything like a dirty action; let him not even think of playing a trick, for you cannot touch pitch without being defiled therewith. Christ and a crust is riches, but a broken character is the worst of, bankruptcy. All is not lost while uprightness remains; but still it is hard to make an empty sack stand upright.

There are other ways of using the old saying.

It is hard for a hypocrite to keep up his profession. Empty sacks can't stand upright in a church any better than in a granary. Prating does not make saints, or there would be plenty of them. Some talkatives have not religion enough to flavor soup for a sick grasshopper, and they have to be mighty cunning to keep the game going. Long prayers and loud professions only deceive the simple. Those who see further than the surface soon spy out the wolf under the sheepskin.

All hope of salvation by our own good works is a foolish attempt to make an empty sack stand upright. We are undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinners at the best. The law of God must be kept without a single failure if we hope to be accepted by it; but there is not one among us who has lived a day without sin. No, we are a lot of empty sacks, and unless the merits of Christ are put into us to fill us up, we cannot stand in the sight of God. The law condemns us already, and to hope for salvation by it is to run to the gallows to prolong our lives. There is a full Christ for empty sinners, but those who hope to fill themselves will find their hopes fail them.