There is a dignity in the very effort to save with a worthy purpose, even though the attempt should not be crowned with eventual success.  It produces a well-regulated mind; it gives prudence a triumph over extravagance; it gives virtue the mastery over vice; it puts the passions under control; it drives away care; it secures comfort.  Saved money, however little, will serve to dry up many a tear—­will ward off many sorrows and heartburnings, which otherwise might prey upon us.  Possessed of a little store of capital, a man walks with a lighter step—­his heart beats more cheerily.  When interruption of work or adversity happens, he can meet them; he can recline on his capital, which will either break his fall, or prevent it altogether.  By prudential economy, we can realize the dignity of man; life will be a blessing, and old age an honour.  We can ultimately, under a kind Providence, surrender life, conscious that we have been no burden upon society, but rather, perhaps, an acquisition and ornament to it; conscious, also, that as we have been independent, our children after us, by following our example, and availing themselves of the means we have left behind us, will walk in like manner through the world in happiness and independence.

Every man’s first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate himself—­helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable methods.  Each has within himself the capability of free will and free action to a large extent; and the fact is proved by the multitude of men who have successfully battled with and overcome the adverse circumstances of life in which they have been placed; and who have risen from the lowest depths of poverty and social debasement, as if to prove what energetic man, resolute of purpose, can do for his own elevation, progress, and advancement in the world.  Is it not a fact that the greatness of humanity, the glory of communities, the power of nations, are the result of trials and difficulties encountered and overcome?

Let a man resolve and determine that he will advance, and the first step of advancement is already made.  The first step is half the battle.  In the very fact of advancing himself, he is in the most effectual possible way advancing others.  He is giving them the most eloquent of all lessons—­that of example; which teaches far more emphatically than words can teach.  He is doing, what others are by imitation incited to do.  Beginning with himself, he is in the most emphatic manner teaching the duty of self-reform and of self-improvement; and if the majority of men acted as he did, how much wiser, how much happier, how much more prosperous as a whole, would society become.  For, society being made up of units, will be happy and prosperous, or the reverse, exactly in the same degree as the respective individuals who compose it.

Complaints about the inequality of conditions are as old as the world.  In the “Economy” of Xenophon, Socrates asks, “How is it that some men live in abundance, and have something to spare, whilst others can scarcely obtain the necessaries of life, and at the same time run into debt?” “The reason is,” replied Isomachus, “because the former occupy themselves with their business, whilst the latter neglect it.”