eye. She is sure she understands economy,
yet she starves the mind to clothe the body in finery. She is something
like the man who could not afford to buy more than a penny herring for
his dinner, yet hired a coach and four to take it home. Saving by retail
and wasting by wholesale. Nowadays we use kerosene and thus our light is
both good and cheap, but the principle remains.

Wear the old clothes until you can pay for more; never wear clothes for
which you owe anyone. Live on plainer food if need be. Greeley said: "If
I had but fifty cents a week to live on, I'd buy a peck of corn and
parch it before I'd owe any man a dollar." The young man who follows
this principle will never be obliged to live on parched corn. How few
people keep an itemized account of their expenses. Spendthrifts never
like to keep accounts. Buy a book; post in it every night your daily
expenditures in the columns; one headed "Necessaries," the other
"Luxuries," and you will find that the latter column will be at least
double the former. Indeed, in some cases it will exceed it ten times
over.

It is not the purchase of the necessaries of life that ruin people, but
the most foolish expenditures which we imagine necessary to our comfort.
Necessary to our comfort; Ah! what a mistake is that, as many a man will
testify who is perpetually dunned by uneasy creditors. It is the
sheerest kind of nonsense, this living on credit. It is wicked. Yet a
gentleman recently told the writer that he personally knew a clergyman
who had been preaching for years on a salary exceeding seven hundred
dollars per year, and of late on twelve hundred per year; yet, this man
of the gospel to-day owes his college debts. A man loaned him money to
go through school, and he has never been "able" to repay that money,
although he has practiced the most "rigid economy."

Stuff! this man knows nothing of the first principles of economy. In my
opinion, there are many clergymen who will have to answer for the sin of
extravigance: There are many more who will have to answer for the sin of
slothfulness. The Bible says: "Six days shalt thou labor and do _all_
thy work." Ah! there is a part of the commandments too often skipped
flippantly over. Many a clergyman would be horrified if asked to do any
labor on the seventh day; but would be equally horrified if accused of
sinning by attending to a foreign business, thereby neglecting to do
_all_ his labor during the six other days.

God gi