usness of the objects we desire; much, too, in
the rareness of their bestowal. When, after long waiting, and by means
of prudent management, it is at last within your power to make some
long-desired object your own, does it not bestow much greater pleasure
than it does on those who have only to wish and to have?

In matters of charity this is still more strikingly true--the pleasure
of bestowing ease and comfort on the poor and distressed is enhanced
tenfold by the consciousness of having made some personal sacrifice for
its attainment. The rich, those who give of their superfluities, can
never fully appreciate what the pleasures of almsgiving really are.

Experience teaches that the necessity of scrupulous economy is the very
best school in which those who are afterwards to be rich can be
educated. Riches always bring their own peculiar claims along with them;
and unless a correct estimate is early formed of the value of money and
the manner in which it can be laid out to the best advantage, you will
never enjoy the comforts and tranquillity which well-managed riches can
bestow. It is much to be doubted whether any one can skilfully manage
large possessions, unless, at some period or other of life, they have
forced themselves, or been forced, to exercise self-denial, and
resolutely given up all those expenses the indulgence of which would
have been imprudent. Those who indiscriminately gratify every taste for
expense the moment it is excited, can never experience the comforts of
competency, though they may have the name of wealth and the reality of
its accompanying cares.

Still further, let your memory and imagination be here exercised to
assist in reconciling you to your present lot. Can you not remember a
time when you wanted money still more than you do now?--when you had a
still greater difficulty in obtaining the things you reasonably desire?
To those who have acquired the art of contentment, the present will
always seem to have some compensating advantage over the past, however
brighter that past may appear to others. This valuable art will bring
every hidden object gradually into light, as the dawning day seems to
waken into existence those objects which had before been unnoticed in
the darkness.

Lastly, your imagination, well employed, will make use of your partial
knowledge of other people's affairs to picture to you how much worse off
many of those are,--how much worse off you might yourself be. You, for