OR,
TWO STRINGS TO YOUR BOW.
———————————
MR. GRESHAM, a Bristol merchant, who had, by honourable 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 propose 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 every thing 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.
* Benjamin, so called from Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
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.
"O! What an excellent motto!" exclaimed Ben, when he read the following words, which were written in large characters, over the chimney-piece, in his uncle's spacious kitchen:
Waste Not, Want Not.