If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents every working day, investing at 7 per cent. compound interest, he will have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twenty cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a saving of one dollar a week from the date of one"s majority would give him one thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life.
"What maintains one vice would bring up two children."
Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whether as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race?
Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every cottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how few there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a young man who should follow Franklin"s example.
Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when President of the United States. He understood that without economy none can be rich, and with it none need be poor.
Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and errors.
Unfortunately Congress can pa.s.s no law that will remedy the vice of living beyond one"s means.
"We are ruined," says Colton, "not by what we really want, but by what we think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy."
"I hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole, "for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don"t need because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths."
Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand dollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get chairs "to match," then sideboards, 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 sofa and _et ceteras_: "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of $30,000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a fine "establishment" a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity."
Cicero said: "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue."
Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here"s something wonderfully cheap; let"s buy it." "Have you any use for it?" "No, not at present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time."
"Annual income," says Macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen six, result--happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery."
"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable," says Horace Greeley; "but debt is infinitely worse than them all."
"If I had but fifty cents a week to live on," said Greeley, "I"d buy a peck of corn and parch it before I"d owe any man a dollar."
To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that which will contribute most to their enrichment.
Economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be done by management.
Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much of the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for my dinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for G.o.ds and heroes.
Like many other boys P. T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus increasing his pennies to dollars.
The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House of Representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "Mr. Speaker, I have found it." And then, in the stillness which followed this strange outburst, he added, "I have found the Philosopher"s stone: it is _Pay as you go_."
In France, all cla.s.ses, the men as well as the women, study the economy of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the people live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. There they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would throw away. There they cook no more for each day than is required for that day. With them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. The consequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of 1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of our large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population of France could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the United States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the United States, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival the best markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live.
There are thousands of families in moderately good circ.u.mstances who have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal."
There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress" bill, and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness.
The misfortune is also that this cla.s.s of persons let their economy apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence, that they think they can afford to squander in other directions.
_Punch_, in speaking of this "one idea" cla.s.s of people, says, "They are like a man who bought a penny herring for his family"s dinner, and then hired a coach and four to take it home." I never knew a man to succeed by practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on plainer food if need be. So that under all circ.u.mstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on acc.u.mulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained.
"I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold," says Rev.
William Marsh, "the one word, savings bank."
Boston savings banks have $130,000,000 on deposit, mostly saved in driblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of the palaces on Beacon street.
"Nature uses a grinding economy," says Emerson, "working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow"s creation; not a superfluous grain of sand for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flung us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail but instantly she s.n.a.t.c.hes at the shred and appropriates it to her general stock. Last summer"s flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature will not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. The moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces, that the parts may be used again for other creations."
"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says Bulwer.
"With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man"s help; I may at least have "my crust of bread and liberty." But with 5000 a year I may dread a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose wages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with 5000 a year I purchase the worst evils of poverty--terror and shame; I may so well manage my money, that with 100 a year I purchase the best blessings of wealth: safety and respect."
CHAPTER XIX.
LIVE UPWARD.
"Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, And this thy last deed ere the judgment day."
If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest.
--PUBLIUS SYRUS.
What is a man, If his chief good, and market of his time, Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure He, that made us with such large discourse, Looking before, and after, gave us not That capability and G.o.dlike Reason To rust in us unused.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It is heaven"s own incentive to make purpose great and achievement greater.
--ANONYMOUS.
"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
"Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well doing."
O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rect.i.tude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man"s search To vaster issues.
--GEORGE ELIOT.
"Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires," said Napoleon to Montholon at St. Helena; "but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole earth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christ is the death of a G.o.d."
"No true man can live a half life," says Phillips Brooks, "when he has genuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higher half, must haunt him."
"Ideality," says Horace Mann, "is only the _avant courier_ of the mind; and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow."
"If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon," writes Bulwer, "what stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?--who has not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?--who has braved the present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his hopes?"
"If I live," wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "all blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business."
I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man turns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of the fact.
"Show me a contented slave," says Burke, "and I will show you a degraded man."
"They truly are faithful," says one writer, "who devote their entire lives to amendment."
General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: "I believe that the labor expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the United States, every ca.n.a.l and highway, and most, if not all, our cities."