soil for the future seed-time. Nature knows no waste; she utilizes the smallest atoms; then why should man deem it degrading to husband his means for future wants and necessities?

Again, every man who would get on in the world should, as far as possible, avoid debt. From the very outset of his career he should sternly resolve to live within his income, however paltry it may be. The art of living easily as to money is very simple; it is, as Bulwer advises in the passage already quoted, to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means. All of the world's wisdom on the subject is most tersely epitomized in the words of Dickens's Micawber: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.' Mr. Micawber's experience, so vividly depicted by Dickens, is that of thousands whose whole lives are made miserable by the folly of living beyond their means. In this country, especially since the late war, there has been a growing tendency in all classes of society to overspend. In every town and village there is a fearful ambition abroad for being "genteel." One half of our families are engaged in a perpetual and desperate struggle to keep up appearances, -to pass for that which they are not. They have neither patience nor courage to go on in the paths. to which God has appointed them, but must needs force themselves into some fashionable state to which they have called themselves, and where they may bask in the smiles of Mrs. Grundy. Everywhere "there is a constant struggle and pressure for front seats in the social amphitheatre, in the midst of which all noble, self-denying resolve is trodden down, and many fine natures are inevitably crushed to death." Marrying early, the young lawyer, merchant, or mechanic is not content to begin life in the simple style in which his father began, increasing his comforts as his earnings increase; but he must live from the very start as the veterans of his calling live after years of toil and economy. The rents he pays, the furniture

301 and ornaments of his house, the luxuries of his table, the number of his servants, the clothes of himself and family, his expenditures for opera-tickets, concerts, lectures, hackney coaches,

not to include the cost of what Charles Lamb would call his "virtuous vices," such as smoking, etc., or dinners at Delmonico's, are all far above his means. The result is, he gets into debt, then more deeply into debt, falls into the clutches of Shylock, is fleeced of large sums for interest, struggles vainly in the toils in which he is involved, becomes desperate, and mismanages his business or half does his work, and at last, after floundering and stumbling on for a few months or years, with inevitable bankruptcy staring him in the face, succumbs under the heavy load of debts, duns, and anxiety, when the curtain falls, and the wretched play of "Keeping up Appearances" is ended.

When will this wretched state of things cease? Never till beginners in life have learned to feel a horror for debt; till those who are ambitious of display learn that it is dishonest to spend what they have not earned, that, as Sir Charles Napier once said to some of his officers, "to drink unpaid-for champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be a cheat, and not a gentleman." Of all the foes to human prosperity and happiness, there is none more deadly than debt. Dr. Johnson held it to be not only an inconvenience, but a calamity. • “Let it be your first care," he says, "not to be in any man's debt. Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult. It lowers a man in self-respect, places him at the mercy of the tradesman and his servant, and renders him a slave in many respects; for he can no longer call himself his own master, nor boldly look the world in the face." It is also difficult for a man who is constantly in debt to be truthful; hence it is said that "lying rides on debt's back."

"An unthrift was a liar from all time,

Never was a debtor that was not deceiver."

Many a ruined man dates his downfall from the day when he began borrowing money. It is easy to avoid the first obligation; but, that incurred, others speedily follow, one necessitating another; every day the poor victim gets more and more inextricably entangled; then follow pretexts, excuses, lies, till all sense of shame is lost, the whole life becomes a makeshift, and the debtor, despairing of deliverance from his embarrassments, deliberately resolves to live by indirect robbery and falsehood. 'I am astonished," says Sir Richard Steele, “that men can be so insensible of the danger of running into debt. One would think it impossible that a man who is given to contract debts should not know that his debtor has, from that moment in which he trangresses payment, so much as that demand comes to in his debtor's honesty, liberty, and fortune. ... Can there be a more low and servile condition than to be ashamed or afraid to see any man breathing? Yet he that is in debt is in that condition with relation to twenty different people. The debtor is the creditor's criminal, and all the officers of power and state, whom we behold make so poor a figure, are no other than so many persons in authority to make good his charge against him. Human society depends on his having the vengeance the law allots him; and the debtor owes his liberty to his neighbor as much as the murderer does his life to his prince." Yet the author of these remarks, who could so vividly depict the miseries of indebtedness, was perpetually struggling with them, and presents in his whole career one of the most melancholy examples which biography affords of the moral sacrifices which are so often occasioned by a disproportion between wants and the means of gratifying them. When reproached by Mr. Whiston for having in the House of Commons given some votes in flagrant contradiction to his formerly professed opinions, he replied, "Mr. Whiston, you can walk on foot, but I cannot.” A coach had become so essential to Steele, that, rather than do without it, he was willing to abandon his most cherished political principles and do violence to his conscience.

Let every young man who is shocked by the conduct of this inconsistent writer avoid the rock on which he split. Let him resolve early that he will at all times look his affairs squarely in the face, that he will know his exact financial condition, and that he will do any work that is honorable, and submit to the most pinching privation, rather than plunge into debt. Eloquently has Douglas Jerrold said: "Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, though his meal be biscuit and an onion, dines in 'The Apollo.' And then for raiment; what warmth in a threadbare coat, if the tailor's receipt be in the pocket! what Tyrian purple in the faded waistcoat, the vest not owed for! how glossy the well-worn hat, if it covers not the aching head of a debtor!.... Debt, however courteously it be offered, is the cup of a siren, and the wine, spiced and delicious though it be, an eating poison. The man out of debt, though with a flaw in his jerkin, a crack in his shoe-leather, and a hole in his hat, is still the son of liberty, free as the singing lark above him; but the debtor, though clothed in the utmost bravery, what is he but a serf out upon a holiday, a slave to be reclaimed at any instant by his owner, the creditor? My son, if poor, see wine in the running spring; let thy mouth water at a last week's roll; think a threadbare coat the 'only wear'; and acknowledge a whitewashed garret the fittest housing place for a gentleman: do this, and flee debt. So shall thy heart be at peace and the sheriff be confounded." *

* Heads for the People.

CHAPTER XIX.

MERCANTILE FAILURES.

To succeed, one must sometimes be very bold and sometimes very prudent. NAPOLEON.

I venture to point out to you what is the best temperament, namely, a combination of the desponding and resolute, or, as I had better express it, of the apprehensive and the resolute. Such is the temperament of great commanders. Secretly, they rely upon nothing and upon nobody. There is such a powerful element of failure in all human affairs, that a shrewd man is always saying to himself, "What shall I do, if that which I count upon does not come out as I expect?" This foresight dwarfs and crushes all but men of great resolution. ARTHUR HELPS.

Let your first efforts be, not for wealth, but independence. Whatever be your talents, whatever your prospects, never be tempted to speculate away, on the chance of a palace, that which you need as a provision against the workhouse.-E. L. BULWER.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.-BOVEE.

O

NE of the bad features of our American life is the growing disposition of our young men to get their living by their wits, and to leave manual labor, agricultural or mechanical, to be monopolized by foreigners. Bodily toil, except of

the lightest kind, is becoming to Young America more and more distasteful. The sons of our farmers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and carpenters no sooner become their own masters than they straightway throw down the scythe, the awl, and the hammer, and rush to the city to engage in the nobler work of weighing sugar, selling tape, hawking books, soliciting insurance, or posting ledgers. And yet, if any fact has been demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt, it is the deceitfulness of the apparent facilities for getting rich in cities. The fact that while in other careers the mass of men are successful, ninetyfive at least out of every hundred who embark in commerce

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