if you want to teach a lesson to your friend who cheated you then give him a very expensive half gift (which he can not sell) and thus see his bankruptcy, like this:
I know a gentleman of fortune who says, that when he first began to
prosper, his wife would have a new and elegant sofa. "That sofa," he
says, "cost me thirty thousand dollars!" When the sofa reached the
house, it was found necessary to get chairs to match; then side-boards,
carpets and tables "to correspond" with them, and so on through the
entire stock of furniture; when at last it was found that the house
itself was quite too small and old-fashioned for the furniture, and a
new one was built to correspond with the new purchases; "thus," added my
friend, "summing up an outlay of thirty thousand dollars, caused by that
single sofa, and saddling on me, in the shape of servants, equipage, and
the necessary expenses attendant upon keeping up a fine 'establishment,'
a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a tight pinch at that:
whereas, ten years ago, we lived with much more real comfort, because
with much less care, on as many hundreds. The truth is," he continued,
"that sofa would have brought me to inevitable bankruptcy, had not a
most unexampled title to prosperity kept me above it, and had I not
checked the natural desire to 'cut a dash'."
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