Therefore, if you are spending so much money that you need more income, take away some of the fire. If you reduce your expenses two dollars a week, you have added nearly eighteen hundred dollars to your account in fifteen years. If you wear your boots one month after you could well persuade yourself to have a new pair, your new ones will not wear out a month sooner for that reason!
GOOD FORTUNE OF OUR LITTLE EGOTISMS.
We are all, fortunately, greatly disposed to contentment with our lot. We do not seem to realize it, but the importance of the pleasures of life which cannot be bartered in, has its noticeable effect on the mind. Horace remarked this ages ago, and Dr. Johnson has thus translated the thoughts hinging upon it: "Howsoever every man may complain occasionally," says he, "of the hardships of his condition, he is seldom willing to change it for any other on the same level. Whether it be that he who follows an employment, chose it at first on account of its suitableness to his inclination; or that when accident, or the determination of others, have pleased him in a particular station, he, by endeavoring to reconcile himself to it, gets the custom of viewing it only on the fairest side; or whether every man thinks that class to which he belongs the most illustrious, merely
BECAUSE HE HAS HONORED IT WITH HIS NAME—
it is certain that, whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong and active prejudice, in favor of their own vocation, always working upon their minds and influencing their action." Let us be thankful for that laughable egotism which is born with us, and within us, and which, in this natural and unobtrusive affair of contentment, becomes a true anchor, holding us inside the peaceful haven.
Marble may rise from crystal waters spanned
By other marbles: founts may plash on stone,
And fashionably-branched trees may stand
As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how cold!
How cold!
