“I walked home once with a little man from the Langental market.  He was surprised to find me going home so early; usually he had to go home alone, he said.  I answered that I hadn’t had anything more to do, and that I didn’t care to sit in the tavern till evening; that it cost money and time, and a man didn’t know when and how he would finally get home.  He felt the same way, he said.  He had begun with nothing and barely got along.  For a long time he had supported father and mother alone, but now he had his home and farm paid for and every year two cows to sell, and not one of them under six hundred pounds.  But he had never wasted a cent from the very beginning.  Only once, he remembered, in Burgdorf he had bought a roll for a halfpenny without needing to—­he could have stood it till he got home, and had a cheaper meal there.  Well, I told him I couldn’t say as much; many a penny I had wasted.  But one could overdo it, too, for a man had to live.  ‘Yes, to be sure,’ said he.  ’I live too, and am happy.  A farthing saved gives me more satisfaction than another man gets from spending a crown.  If I hadn’t begun that way I’d never have come to anything.  A poor lad doesn’t know enough to stop at the right time when once he begins; when he’s thrown away one penny it pulls a dozen along after it.  But you mustn’t think I’m a miserable miser.  Many a man has gone away empty-handed from the big farm-houses and has got what he needed from me.  I didn’t forget who has blessed my work and will soon demand an account from me.’  At this I looked the little man up and down with great respect; nobody could have told what was in him from his looks.  Before we separated I wanted to buy him a bottle of wine for his good advice.  But he refused; he didn’t need anything, and whether he squandered my money or his would come to the same thing on that future account.  Since then I’ve never seen him; probably he’s gone to his account by now, and if nobody had a worse one than he many a man would be better off.

“So this is my opinion:  every single farthing of your pay that you spend for such useless things is ill spent.  Stay at home, and you’ll save not merely ten crowns, but a lot besides.  All the servants complain how many shoes and clothes they need, when they have to be out in wind and weather; but do you know how most of their clothes are spoiled?  By running around at night in all kinds of weather, through thick and thin, and with all that goes on then.  If you wear your clothes twenty-four hours, you evidently use ’em up more than if it was only fourteen.  You don’t go calling in wooden shoes, and do you burst out more shoe-nails by day, or by night when you can’t see the stones, the holes, or the ditches?  And tell me, how do your Sunday clothes look after you’ve stumbled around in them drunk, pulled each other about, and rolled in the mud?  How many a Sunday jacket has been torn to pieces, the trousers ruined, the hat lost!

“Many a man would surely need less for his clothes if he stayed at home; I say nothing about the girls.  And think, Uli, if you need ten crowns now for such useless habits, in ten years you’ll need twenty and in twenty forty, if you have them; for a habit like that doesn’t stand still it grows.  And doesn’t that lead straight as a string to your old ways?