MARIA EDGEWORTH
Mr. Gresham, a Bristol merchant, who had by honorable industry and economy accumulated a considerable fortune, retired from business to a new house which he had built upon the Downs, near Clifton. Mr. Gresham, however, did not imagine that a new house alone could make him happy: he did not purpose to live in idleness and extravagance, for such a life would have been equally incompatible with his habits and his principles. He was fond of children, and as he had no sons, he determined to adopt one of his relations. He had two nephews, and he invited both of them to his house, that he might have an opportunity of judging of their dispositions, and of the habits which they had acquired.
Hal and Benjamin, Mr. Gresham's nephews, were about ten years old; they had been educated very differently. Hal was the son of the elder branch of the family; his father was a gentleman, who spent rather more than he could afford; and Hal, from the example of the servants in his father's family, with whom he had passed the first years of his childhood, learned to waste more of everything than he used. He had been told that "gentlemen should be above being careful and saving"; and he had unfortunately imbibed a notion that extravagance is the sign of a generous, and economy of an avaricious disposition.
Benjamin, on the contrary, had been taught habits of care and foresight: his father had but a very small fortune, and was anxious that his son should early learn that economy insures independence, and sometimes puts it in the power of those who are not very rich, to be very generous.
The morning after these two boys arrived at their uncle's, they were eager to see all the rooms in the house. Mr. Gresham accompanied them, and attended to their remarks, and exclamations.
"Oh! what an excellent motto!" exclaimed Ben, when he read the following words which were written in large characters over the chimneypiece, in his uncle's spacious kitchen:
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
"Waste not, want not!" repeated his cousin Hal, in rather a contemptuous tone; "I think it looks stingy to servants; and no gentleman's servants, cooks especially, would like to have such a mean motto always staring them in the face."
Ben, who was not so conversant as his cousin in the ways of cooks and gentleman's servants, made no reply to these observations.
Mr. Gresham was called away while his nephews were looking at the other rooms in the house. Some time afterwards, he heard their voices in the hall.