loans through life, is continually living on
other men's means, is a serious burden and a detriment to those who
deal with him, although his estate should finally pay every dollar
of his legal obligations.

"Inordinate expenditure is the cause of a great share of the crime
and consequent misery which devastate the world. The clerk who
spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler
and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very
certain to become in time a trickster and a cheat. Wherever you see
a man spending faster than he earns, there look out for villainy to
be developed, though it be the farthest thing possible from his
present thought.

"When the world shall have become wiser, and its standard of
morality more lofty, it will perceive and affirm that profuse
expenditure, even by one who can pecuniarily afford it, is
pernicious and unjustifiable--that a man, however wealthy, has
no right to lavish on his own appetites, his tastes, or his
ostentation, that which might have raised hundreds from destitution
and despair to comfort and usefulness. But that is an improvement in
public sentiment which must be waited for, while the other is more
ready and obvious.

"The meanness, the dishonesty, the iniquity, of squandering
thousands unearned, and keeping others out of money that is justly
theirs, have rarely been urged and enforced as they should be. They
need but to be considered and understood, to be universally loathed
and detested."[4]

[Footnote 4: Horace Greeley.]

Nearly allied with the Habits of the young, are their _Amusements_.
That the youthful should be allowed a reasonable degree of
recreation, is universally admitted. The laws of health demand
relaxation from the labors and cares of life. The body, the
mind, constantly strained to the highest exertion, without
repose, and something to cheer, refreshen, and re-invigorate it,
will speedily fall into disease and death. The very word
recreation--(re-creation)--indicates that to a degree, proper
amusement has the power to revive the wearied energies, supply
afresh the springs of life, and give a renewed elasticity and
endurance to all the capacities of our nature.

Yet there is no subject surrounded with greater difficulties, than
the _amusements_ of the youthful. There is no amusement, however
harmless and proper in its nature, but what can be carried to
such excess, as to inflict deep injury. It is while search