though the penny be black? "The smith and his penny are both black." But
the penny earned by the smith is an honest one.

If a man does not know how to save his pennies or his pounds, his nose
will always be kept to the grindstone. Want may come upon him any day,
"like an armed man." Careful saving acts like magic: once begun, it
grows into habit. It gives a man a feeling of satisfaction, of strength,
of security. The pennies he has put aside in his savings box, or in the
savings bank, give him an assurance of comfort in sickness, or of rest
in old age. The man who saves has something to weather-fend him against
want; while the man who saves not has nothing between him and bitter,
biting poverty.

A man may be disposed to save money, and lay it by for sickness or for
other purposes; but he cannot do this unless his wife lets him, or helps
him. A prudent, frugal, thrifty woman is a crown of glory to her
husband. She helps him in all his good resolutions; she may, by quiet
and gentle encouragement, bring out his better qualities; and by her
example she may implant in him noble principles, which are the seeds of
the highest practical virtues.

The Rev. Mr. Owen, formerly of Bilston,--a good friend and adviser of
working people,--used to tell a story of a man who was not an economist,
but was enabled to become so by the example of his wife. The man was a
calico-printer at Manchester, and he was persuaded by his wife, on their
wedding-day, to allow her two half-pints of ale a day, as her share. He
rather winced at the bargain, for, though a drinker himself, he would
have preferred a perfectly sober wife. They both worked hard; and he,
poor man, was seldom out of the public-house as soon as the factory was
closed.

She had her daily pint, and he, perhaps, had his two or three quarts,
and neither interfered with the other? except that, at odd times, she
succeeded, by dint of one little gentle artifice or another, to win him
home an hour or two earlier at night; and now and then to spend an
entire evening in his own house. They had been married a year, and on
the morning of their wedding anniversary, the husband looked askance at
her neat and comely person, with some shade of remorse, as he said,
"Mary, we've had no holiday since we were wed; and, only that I have not
a penny in the world, we'd take a jaunt down to the village, to see thee
mother."

"Would'st like to go, John? "said she, softly,between a smile and a
tear,