l, a man walks with a lighter
step--his heart beats more cheerily. When interruption of work or
adversity happens, he can meet them; he can recline on his capital,
which will either break his fall, or prevent it altogether. By
prudential economy, we can realize the dignity of man; life will be a
blessing, and old age an honour. We can ultimately, under a kind
Providence, surrender life, conscious that we have been no burden upon
society, but rather, perhaps, an acquisition and ornament to it;
conscious, also, that as we have been independent, our children after
us, by following our example, and availing themselves of the means we
have left behind us, will walk in like manner through the world in
happiness and independence.

Every man's first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate
himself--helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable
methods. Each has within himself the capability of free will and free
action to a large extent; and the fact is proved by the multitude of men
who have successfully battled with and overcome the adverse
circumstances of life in which they have been placed; and who have risen
from the lowest depths of poverty and social debasement, as if to prove
what energetic man, resolute of purpose, can do for his own elevation,
progress, and advancement in the world. Is it not a fact that the
greatness of humanity, the glory of communities, the power of nations,
are the result of trials and difficulties encountered and overcome?

Let a man resolve and determine that he will advance, and the first step
of advancement is already made. The first step is half the battle. In
the very fact of advancing himself, he is in the most effectual possible
way advancing others. He is giving them the most eloquent of all
lessons--that of example; which teaches far more emphatically than words
can teach. He is doing, what others are by imitation incited to do.
Beginning with himself, he is in the most emphatic manner teaching the
duty of self-reform and of self-improvement; and if the majority of men
acted as he did, how much wiser, how much happier, how much more
prosperous as a whole, would society become. For, society being made up
of units, will be happy and prosperous, or the reverse, exactly in the
same degree as the respective individuals who compose it.

Complaints about the inequality of conditions are as old as the world.
In the "Economy" of Xenophon, Socrates asks, "How is it that so