It will soon blow over. We are always having these political flurries. A
good crop will make it all right with them."
"But is it true that they have to pay such rates of interest as our young
friend mentioned?"
"Well," I said, seeing the thing in the humorous light which softens for
us Americans so many of the hardships of others, "I suppose that man likes
to squeeze his brother man when he gets him in his grip. That's human
nature, you know."
"Is it?" asked the Altrurian.
It seemed to me that he had asked something like that before when I
alleged human nature in defence of some piece of every-day selfishness.
But I thought best not to notice it, and I went on: "The land is so rich
out there that a farm will often pay for itself with a single crop."
"Is it possible?" cried the Altrurian. "Then I suppose it seldom really
happens that a mortgage is foreclosed, in the way our young friend
insinuated?"
"Well, I can't say that exactly"; and, having admitted so much, I did not
feel bound to impart a fact that popped perversely into my mind. I was
once talking with a Western money-lender, a very good sort of fellow,
frank and open as the day; I asked him whether the farmers generally paid
off their mortgages, and he answered me that if the mortgage was to the
value of a fourth of the land, the farmer might pay it off, but if it were
to a half, or a third even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died in
his debts.
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