This, however, is not the usual practice.  The young man now spends, or desires to spend, quite as liberally, and often much more liberally, than his father, who is about to end his career.  He begins life where his father left off.  He spends more than his father did at his age, and soon finds himself up to his ears in debt.  To satisfy his incessant wants, he resorts to unscrupulous means, and to illicit gains.  He tries to make money rapidly; he speculates, over-trades, and is speedily wound up.  Thus he obtains experience; but it is the result, not of well-doing, but of ill-doing.

Socrates recommends fathers of families to observe the practice of their thrifty neighbours—­of those who spend their means to the best advantage,—­and to profit by their example.  Thrift is essentially practical, and can best be taught by facts.  Two men earn, say, five shillings a day.  They are in precisely the same condition as respects family living, and expenditure Yet the one says he cannot save, and does not; while the other says he can save, and regularly deposits part of his savings in a savings bank, and eventually becomes a capitalist.

Samuel Johnson fully knew the straits of poverty.  He once signed his name Impransus, or Dinnerless.  He had walked the streets with Savage, not knowing where to lay his head at night.  Johnson never forgot the poverty through which he passed in his early life, and he was always counselling his friends and readers to avoid it.  Like Cicero, he averred that the best source of wealth or well-being was economy.  He called it the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the mother of Liberty. his mind, his character.  Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement.  It stimulates a man to rise, to look upward, to develop his intelligence, to improve his condition.  Self-respect is the root of most of the virtues—­of cleanliness, chastity, reverence, honesty, sobriety.  To think meanly of one’s self is to sink; sometimes to descend a precipice at the bottom of which is infamy.

Every man can help himself to some extent.  We are not mere straws thrown upon the current to mark its course; but possessed of freedom of action, endowed with power to stem the waves and rise above them, each marking out a course for himself.  We can each elevate ourselves in the scale of moral being.  We can cherish pure thoughts.  We can perform good actions.  We can live soberly and frugally.  We can provide against the evil day.  We can read good books, listen to wise teachers, and place ourselves under the divinest influences on earth.  We can live for the highest purposes, and with the highest aims in view.

“Self-love and social are the same,” says one of our poets.  The man who improves himself, improves the world.  He adds one more true man to the mass.  And the mass being made up of individuals, it is clear that were each to improve himself, the result would be the improvement of the whole.  Social advancement is the consequence of individual advancement.  The whole cannot be pure, unless the individuals composing it are pure.  Society at large is but the reflex of individual conditions.  All this is but the repetition of a truism, but truisms have often to be repeated to make their full impression.