Now, let me leave this little word of counsel for you. Keep a little ledger, as I did. Write down in it what you receive, and do not be ashamed to write down what you pay away. See that you pay it away in such a manner that your father or mother may look over your book and see just what you did with your money. It will help you to save money, and that you ought to do. When I spoke of a poor man with money I spoke against the poverty of that man who has no affection for anything else, or thought for anything else but money. That kind of a man does not help his own character, nor does he build up the character of another.
Before I leave you I will read a few items from my ledger. I find in looking over it that I was saving money all this time, and in the course of a few years I had saved $1,000. Now, as to some of my expenses. I see that from November twenty-fourth, 1855, to April, 1856, I paid for clothing $9.09. I see also, here, another item which I am inclined to think is extravagant, because I remember I used to wear mittens. The item is a pair of fur-gloves, for which I paid $2.50. In the same period, I find I gave away $5.58. In one month I gave to foreign-missions ten cents; to the mite-society thirty cents, and there is also a contribution to the Five-Points Mission. I was not living then in New York, but I suppose I felt that it was in need of help, so I sent up twelve cents to the mission. Then to the venerable teacher of my class I gave thirty-five cents to make him a present. To the poor people of the church I gave ten cents at this time. In January and February following I gave ten cents more and a further ten cents to the foreign-missions. Those contributions, small as they were, brought me into direct contact with philanthropic work, and with the beneficial work and aims of religious institutions, and I have been helped thereby greatly all my life. It is a mistake for a man who wishes for happiness and to help others to wait until he has a fortune before giving to deserving objects. [Great applause.]
And this exemplary citizen, who in his youth and poverty formed the habit of systematic benevolence, who befriends the poor, who dispenses charity with a bountiful hand, who helps young men better their condition, who gives millions for education and religion, who believes in the justice of God and the rights of man, who has woven the raveled skeins of a weakened industry into the world’s grandest business-enterprise, assassins of character picture as a cold-blooded oppressor, a base conspirator, a “devourer of widows’ houses,” an abettor of larceny and instigator of arson! “Oh, Shame! where is thy blush?”
Although the Standard pays the highest wages in the world and has never had a serious strike in its grand army of forty-thousand men, not one cent of a reduction was ordered during the panic. No works stopped and no employés were turned adrift to beg or starve. On the contrary, improvements and additions were made continually, the force of workmen was augmented, cash was paid for everything bought, no claims remained unsettled and nobody had to wait an hour for money justly due. These are points for the toiling masses, whom prejudice against big corporations sometimes misleads, to understand and consider before accepting the creed that wealth and dishonor are synonymous, that each is the creature of the other and both are twin-links of the same sausage.
A WELL-SHOOTER.
The Oil-City Blizzard, itself as lively as a glycerine-explosion, in a spasm of dynamite-enthusiasm loaded up and fired off this eccentricity:
Pat Magnew was a shooter bold,
Who handled glycerine;
And though he had no printing-shop
He ran a magazine.