Let me exhort you with earnestness to give your most sincere attention to this matter.  It is of the utmost importance to every one of you.  Let your next object be to obtain as soon as may be, a competency of the good things of this world; immense wealth is not necessary for you, and would but diminish your real happiness.  Abject poverty is and ought to be regarded as the greatest, most terrible of all possible evils.  It should be shunned as a most deadly and damning sin.  What then are the means by which so dreadful a calamity may be avoided?  I will tell you, my friends, in these simple words—­hear and ponder on them; write them upon the tablets of your memory; they are worthy to be inscribed in letters of gold upon every door-post—­“industry, prudence, and economy.”  Oh! they are words of power to guide you to respectability and happiness.  Attend, then, to some of the laws which industry impose, while you have health and strength.  Let not the rising sun behold you sleeping or indolently lying upon your beds.  Rise ever with the morning light; and, till sun-set, give not an hour to idleness.  Say not human nature cannot endure it.  It can—­it almost requires it.  Sober, diligent, and moderate labor does not diminish it, but on the contrary, greatly adds to the health, vigor, and duration of the human frame.  Thousands of the human race have died prematurely of disease engendered by indolence and inactivity.  Few, very few indeed, have suffered by the too long continuance of bodily exertion.  As you give the day to labor, so devote the night to rest; for who that has drunk and reveled all night at a tippling shop, or wandered about in search of impious and stolen pleasures, has not by so doing not only committed a most heinous and damning sin in the sight of Heaven, but rendered himself wholly unfit for the proper discharge of the duties of the coming day.  Nor think that industry or true happiness do not go hand in hand; and to him who is engaged in some useful avocation, time flies delightfully and rapidly away.  He does not, like the idle and indolent man, number the slow hours with sighs—­cursing both himself and them for the tardiness of their flight.  Ah, my friends, it is utterly impossible for him who wastes time in idleness, ever to know anything of true happiness.  Indolence, poverty, wretchedness, are inseparable companions,—­fly them, shun idleness, as from eminent and inevitable destruction.  In vain will you labor unless prudence and economy preside over and direct all your exertions.  Remember at all times that money even in your own hands, is power; with it you may direct as you will the actions of your pale, proud brethren.  Seek after and amass it then, by just and honorable means; and once in your hand never part with it but for a full and fair equivalent; nor let that equivalent be something which you do not want, and for which you cannot obtain more than it cost you.  Be watchful and diligent and let your mind be fruitful in devises for the honest advancement of your worldly interest.  So shall you continually rise in respectability, in rank and standing in this so late and so long the land of your captivity.