"It is, you may depend upon it. Every journeyman mechanic, if he be industrious and have a prudent, economical wife, as you have, may acc.u.mulate a snug little property, and live quite at his ease, when he pa.s.ses the prime of life. Is it not all very plain to you."
"It certainly is, and I am determined that I will try to get a-head just in the way that you describe. If you can save seventy-five dollars a year, there is no good reason why I should not do the same."
"None in the world. Only persevere in your economy and self-denial, and you are certain of accomplishing all I have set forth."
We are sorry that we cannot give as good an account of Johnson as we could wish. He tried to be economical, and to break himself of his bad habits of chewing, drinking, and other self-indulgences, for a little while, and then sunk down into his old ways and went on as usual.
Hopelessly his poor wife, now in ill health, is toiling on, and will have to toil on until she sink, from exhaustion, into the grave, and her children become scattered among strangers, to bear the hard lot of the orphan.
How many hundreds are there like Johnson who spend as they go, in self-indulgence, what, if properly h.o.a.rded, would make their last days bright with life"s declining sunshine.
THE END.