is work-bench.

"One cigar a day is three cents a day," remarked Judge Boompointer,
gravely; "and do you know, sir, what one cigar a day, or three cents a
day, amounts to in the course of four years?"

John Jenkins, in his boyhood, had attended the village school, and
possessed considerable arithmetical ability. Taking up a shingle which
lay upon his work-bench, and producing a piece of chalk, with a feeling
of conscious pride he made an exhaustive calculation.

"Exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents," he replied, wiping the
perspiration from his heated brow, while his face flushed with honest
enthusiasm.

"Well, sir, if you saved three cents a day, instead of wasting it, you
would now be the possessor of a new suit of clothes, an illustrated
Family Bible, a pew in the church, a complete set of Patent Office
Reports, a hymn-book, and a paid subscription to Arthur's Home
Magazine, which could be purchased for exactly forty-three dollars and
eighty cents; and," added the Judge, with increasing sternness, "if you
calculate leap-year, which you seem to have strangely omitted, you have
three cents more, sir; THREE CENTS MORE! What would that buy you, sir?"

"A cigar," suggested John Jenkins; but, coloring again deeply, he hid
his face.

"No, sir," said the Judge, with a sweet smile of benevolence stealing
over his stern features; "properly invested, it would buy you that
which passeth all price. Dropped into the missionary-box, who can tell
what heathen, now idly and joyously wantoning in nakedness and sin,
might be brought to a sense of his miserable condition, and made,
through that three cents, to feel the torments of the wicked?"

With these words the Judge retired, leaving John Jenkins buried in
profound thought. "Three cents a day," he muttered. "In forty years I
might be worth four hundred and thirty-eight dollars and ten
cents,--and then I might marry Mary. Ah, Mary!" The young carpenter
sighed, and, drawing a twenty-five cent daguerreotype from his
vest-pocket, gazed long and fervidly upon the features of a young girl
in book muslin and a coral necklace. Then, with a resolute expression,
he carefully locked the door of his workshop and departed.

Alas! his good resolutions were too late. We trifle with the tide of
fortune which too often nips us in the bud and casts the dark shadow of
misfortune over the bright lexicon of youth! That night the
half-consumed fragment of John Jenkins's cigar