of intelligence. The painful fact, however, is to be recognized, that the saving habit is losing ground. The reasons are evident: city and country are one. The standards of dress, amusements, and life generally are set in the richer circles of the metropolis, and are observed, at whatever cost, in all other circles. I can do nothing to offset these influences but to remind you of nobler methods. I can only say that to spend all one earns is a mistake; that while to spend, except in a severe and judicious way, weakens character, economy dignifies and strengthens it.

The habit of saving is itself an education. It fosters every virtue. It teaches self-denial. It cultivates a sense of order. It trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. It reveals the meaning of the word business, which is something very different from its routine. One may know all the forms of business, even in a practical way, without having the business characteristic. Were a merchant to choose for a partner a young man thoroughly conversant with the business, but having expensive, self-indulgent personal habits, or one not as yet versed in its details, but who knows how to keep a dollar when he has earned it, he would unhesitatingly take the latter. The habit of saving, while it has its dangers, even fosters generosity. The great givers have been great savers. The miserly habit is not acquired but is inborn. Not there lies the danger. The divinely-ordered method of saving so educates and establishes such order in the man, and brings him into so intelligent a relation to the world, that he becomes a benefactor. It is coarse thinking to confound spending with generosity, or saving with meanness.

(2.) I vary the strain but little when I say, Avoid a self-indulgent spending of money.

The great body of young men in our country are in the receipt of such incomes that the question whether a thing can be afforded or not becomes a highly rational inquiry. With incomes ranging from a dollar or less per day to a thousand dollars a year, there is room for the play of that wise word, afford. I think it tends to shut out several things that are very generally indulged in. I have no intention of saying anything here against the pleasant habit of smoking, except to set it in the light of this common-sense word, afford. Your average salaries are, say, five hundred dollars. If you smoke cigars, your smallest daily allowance will be two, costing at least twenty cents, I assume that you do not degrade yourselves by using the five-cent article, than seventy dollars a year. If it were fifty, it would be a tenth of your salary. The naked question for a rational being to consider is, Can I afford to spend a tenth or seventh of my income in a mere indulgence? What has common sense to say to the proportion? Would not this amount, lodged in some sound investment, contribute rather more to self-respect? Ten years of such expenditure represent probably a thousand dollars, for there is an inevitable ratio of increase in all self-indulgent habits; fifty years represent five thousand,

more

more than most men will have at sixty-five, who began life with so poor an understanding of the word afford. Double these estimates, and they will be all the truer.

I do not propose in these pages to enter on a crusade against tobacco, but I may remind you that the eye of the world is fixed on the tobacco habit with a very close gaze. The educators in Europe and America are agreed that it impairs mental energy. Life-insurance companies are shy of its peculiar pulse. Oculists say that

it weakens the eyes. Physicians declare it to be a prolific cause of dyspepsia, and hence of other ills. The vital statistician finds in it an enemy of virility. It is asserted by the leading authorities in each department that it takes the spring out of the nerves, the firmness out of the muscles, the ring out of the voice; that it renders the memory less retentive, the judgment less accurate, the conscience less quick, the sensibilities less acute; that it relaxes the will, and dulls every faculty of body and mind and moral nature, dropping the entire man down in the scale of his powers, and so is to be regarded as one of the wasters of society. I do not undertake to affirm all these propositions, but only to show how the social critics of the day are regarding the subject.

The habit of drinking is so nearly parallel with smoking in its relation to thrift that it need not detain us. The same cogent word afford applies here with stronger emphasis, because the drinking habit involves a larger ratio of increase. Waiving any moral considerations involved in beer drinking, the fact of its cost should throw it out. The same startling figures we have used are more than true here. It is not a thrifty habit, and no young man who has his way to make in the world is entitled to an unthrifty habit. It is idle to repeat the truisms of the theme. We have heard till we cease to heed that drink is the great waster of society. Great Britain spends annually two hundred and fifty millions of dollars in drink. Our own statistics are nearly as bad. It is the one thing even if it does not reach the proportions of a vice that keeps more men out of a competence than all other causes combined. The twin habits of smoking and beer-drinking stand for a respectable property to all who indulge in them, a thing

the greater part will never have, though they have had it. "The Gods sell all things at a fair price," says the proverb; but they sell nothing dearer than these two indulgences, since the price is commonly the man himself.

The simple conclusion that common sense forces upon us is that a young man fronting life cannot afford to drink; he cannot afford the money; he cannot afford to bear the reputation, nor run the risks it involves.

I refer next to the habit of light and foolish spending. Emerson says, "The farmer's dollar is heavy; the clerk's is light and nimble, leaps out of his pockets, jumps on to cards and faro tables." But it gets into no more foolish place than the till of the showman, and minstrel troupe, and theatrical company. I do not say these things are bad. When decent, they are allowable as an occasional recreation, but here, as before, the sense of proportion must be observed; not what I like, but what I can afford.

It has been said that no one should carry coin loose in the pocket, as too easily got at. I would vary it by applying the Spanish proverb, "Before forty, nothing; after forty, anything." If one has been careful in early life he may be careless after. At first let the purse be stout and well tied with stout strings; later there need be no purse, but only an open hand.

It seems to be an excess of simplicity to suggest that a young man should purchase nothing that he does not actually want, nothing because it is cheap; to resist the glittering appeals of jewels and gay clothing and delicate surroundings. These will come in due order.

(3.) It is an essential condition of thrift that one should keep to legitimate occupations. There is no thrift in chance; its central idea is order, a series of causes and effects along the line of which forethought

can look and make its calculations. Speculation makes the few rich and the many poor. Thrift divides the prizes of life to those who deserve them. If the great fortunes are the results of speculations, the average competencies have their foundation and permanence in thrifty ways.

(4.) Have a thorough knowledge of your affairs; leave nothing at loose ends; be exact in every business transaction. The chief source of quarrel in the business world is what is termed "an understanding," ending commonly in a misunderstanding. It is not ungenerous or ignoble always to insist on a full, straight-out bargain, and it falls in with the thrifty habit.

It is a very simple matter to name, but the habit of keeping a strict account of personal expenses down to the penny has great educational power. Keep such a book, tabulate its items at the close of the year, so much for necessaries, so much for luxuries, so much for worse than luxuries, and listen to what it reports to you.

(5.) Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open foes. It may sometimes be wise for one to put himself under a heavy debt, as for an education, or for land, or for a home; but the debt-habit is the twin brother of poverty.

(6.) Thrift must have a sufficient motive. There is none a young man feels so keenly, if once he will think so far, as the honorable place assigned to men of substance. No man is quite respectable in this nineteenth century who has not a bank account. True or false, high or low, this is the solid fact, and, for one, I do not quarrel with it. As most of us are situated in this world, we must win this place and pay its price. The common cry of "a good time while we are young" is not the price nor the way.