e inspiration which we derive
from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, and--but too
often--from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt
not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough
to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a
cultivated British woman.

But just because a cultivated British woman is so perfect a personage;
therefore I wish to see all British women cultivated. Because the
womanhood of England is so precious a treasure; I wish to see none of it
wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or material, out of which the
greatest possible profit to the nation must be made. And that can only
be done by thrift; and that, again, can only be attained by knowledge.

Consider that word thrift. If you will look at Dr. Johnson's Dictionary,
or if you know your Shakespeare, you will see that thrift signified
originally profits, gain, riches gotten--in a word, the marks of a man's
thriving.

How, then, did the word thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the
opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy--which first, of
course, meant the management of a household--got to mean also the
opposite of waste.

It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in fact, men
throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their material, their
force.

Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws of
nature--call them, rather, laws of God--which apply not merely to
political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to physiology, to
society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every person in this room.

The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as
possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and
obstruction, the least wear and tear.

And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the
laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily,
surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your money or your
energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in
disappointment and exhaustion.

The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the more
you can save yourself and that which belongs to you; and can do more work
with less effort.

A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves capital,
enabling a less capital to do the work of a greater. Knowledge of the
electric tele