"Do you mean to tell me that you pay cash for everything you buy?" asked my neighbor, upon hearing me comment that we had no charge accounts. "Why, I can't believe it, she said, shocked. "We have accounts in nearly every store in town. It makes it so convenient," she boasted.

I didn't argue the point. I thought of many friends who are head over heels in debt because of this convenience. They don't seem to fret about the future. Instead of gradually getting out of debt, they seem slowly to creep deeper into debt all the time. This would worry me tremendously, because when I was a child - about eight years old - I had an experience which taught me the importance of paying off a debt promptly.

My mother had sent me to mail two letters for her. We lived on a farm and the mailbox was half a mile down the road. Dilly-dallying on the way, I lost three of the four pennies for postage (at that time it cost just two cents to mail a letter). When the mailman arrived, I explained my sorry plight.

"That's okay," said the elderly mailman in his kindly way. "I'll mail your letters anyway. You can bring me the three cents some other time."

I didn't tell Mom about the incident. I fully intended to take three pennies from my piggy bank and pay the debt - but somehow I neglected doing it at once.

As time passed, I completely forgot about it until the day we received word that our mailman had had a heart attack and wasn't expected to live. Then I told Mom about the three cents I owed him. She made plans at once to drive me into town to pay him a visit. The two-mile drive seemed endless as I sat, clutching the three pennies from my piggy bank.

When we arrived at the mailman's house, a nurse escorted us into his bedroom. He look so very, very ill. Although he was conscious, he showed no signs of recognizing us. After Mother explained who we were and why we had come, he whispered, "Come here, my child." Slowly he extended his hand to me. Tears streamed down my face as I placed the three pennies in the palm of his hand.

"Thank you for coming," he said faintly, and smiled ever so slightly as he concluded, "You'll never go wrong if you always pay your debts."

We left him then. The next day our dear friend, the mailman, died. I've always remembered his wise words of advice, and long, long ago, I added another word to it: "Promptly".

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