to cut off his escape, got a sprain that kept him to his bed for a fortnight.  The cook, on her return to the farm-house, found the linen burnt that she had hung up before the fire to dry; and the milkmaid, having forgotten in her haste to tie up the cattle in the cow-house, one of the loose cows had broken the leg of a colt that happened to be kept in the same shed.  The linen burnt and the gardener’s work lost were worth full five pounds, and the colt worth nearly double that money:  so that here was a loss in a few minutes of a large sum, purely for want of a little latch which might have been supplied for a few halfpence.  Life is full of illustrations of a similar kind.  When small things are habitually neglected, ruin is not far off.  It is the hand of the diligent that maketh rich; and the diligent man or woman is attentive to small things as well as great.  The things may appear very little and insignificant, yet attention to them is as necessary as to matters of greater moment.

Take, for instance, the humblest of coins—­a penny.  What is the use of that little piece of copper—­a solitary penny?  What can it buy?  Of what use is it?  It is half the price of a glass of beer.  It is the price of a box of matches.  It is only fit for giving to a beggar.  And yet how much of human happiness depends upon the spending of the penny well.

A man may work hard, and earn high wages; but if he allows the pennies, which are the result of hard work, to slip out of his fingers—­some going to the beershop, some this way, and some that,—­he will find that his life of hard work is little raised above a life of animal drudgery.  On the other hand, if he take care of the pennies—­putting some weekly into a benefit society or an insurance fund, others into a savings bank, and confides the rest to his wife to be carefully laid out, with a view to the comfortable maintenance and culture of his family,—­he will soon find that his attention to small matters will abundantly repay him, in increasing means, in comfort at home, and in a mind comparatively free from fears as to the future.

All savings are made up of little things.  “Many a little makes a mickle.”  Many a penny makes a pound.  A penny saved is the seed of pounds saved.  And pounds saved mean comfort, plenty, wealth, and independence.  But the penny must be earned honestly.  It is said that a penny earned honestly is better than a shilling given.  A Scotch proverb says, “The gear that is gifted is never sae sweet as the gear that is won.”  What though the penny be black?  “The smith and his penny are both black.”  But the penny earned by the smith is an honest one.

If a man does not know how to save his pennies or his pounds, his nose will always be kept to the grindstone.  Want may come upon him any day, “like an armed man.”  Careful saving acts like magic:  once begun, it grows into habit.  It gives a man a feeling of satisfaction, of strength, of security.  The pennies he has put aside in his savings box, or in the savings bank, give him an assurance of comfort in sickness, or of rest in old age.  The man who saves has something to weather-fend him against want; while the man who saves not has nothing between him and bitter, biting poverty.