f you reduce your expenses two dollars a
week, you have added nearly eighteen hundred dollars to your account in
fifteen years. If you wear your boots one month after you could well
persuade yourself to have a new pair, your new ones will not wear out a
month sooner for that reason!

GOOD FORTUNE OF OUR LITTLE EGOTISMS.

We are all, fortunately, greatly disposed to contentment with our lot.
We do not seem to realize it, but the importance of the pleasures of
life which cannot be bartered in, has its noticeable effect on the mind.
Horace remarked this ages ago, and Dr. Johnson has thus translated the
thoughts hinging upon it: "Howsoever every man may complain
occasionally," says he, "of the hardships of his condition, he is
seldom willing to change it for any other on the same level. Whether it
be that he who follows an employment, chose it at first on account of
its suitableness to his inclination; or that when accident, or the
determination of others, have pleased him in a particular station, he,
by endeavoring to reconcile himself to it, gets the custom of viewing it
only on the fairest side; or whether every man thinks that class to
which he belongs the most illustrious, merely

BECAUSE HE HAS HONORED IT WITH HIS NAME--

it is certain that, whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong
and active prejudice, in favor of their own vocation, always working
upon their minds and influencing their action." Let us be thankful for
that laughable egotism which is born with us, and within us, and which,
in this natural and unobtrusive affair of contentment, becomes a true
anchor, holding us inside the peaceful haven.

AMBITION.

Marble may rise from crystal waters spanned
By other marbles: founts may plash on stone,
And fashionably-branched trees may stand
As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how cold!
How cold!

We are made up of elements. These elements should be well
balanced. The delicacy of equilibrium is what makes the perfect man, or,
rather, the honorable man. Too much avarice makes a contemptibly mean
man; not enough makes a foolish spendthrift, who is always appealing to
his friends for help. Too much bravery in man makes a bully; not enough
a coward. Too much speech in man makes a bore; not enough a "stick." Too
much hope in man makes a speculator and a gambler; not enough, a hermit
and a man-hater. So of ambition. It is a flame to be guarded--a willing
slave, an unpi