IN TAKING AWAY SOME FIRE.”

Therefore, if you are spending so much money that you need more income, take away some of the fire.  If you reduce your expenses two dollars a week, you have added nearly eighteen hundred dollars to your account in fifteen years.  If you wear your boots one month after you could well persuade yourself to have a new pair, your new ones will not wear out a month sooner for that reason!

GOOD FORTUNE OF OUR LITTLE EGOTISMS.

We are all, fortunately, greatly disposed to contentment with our lot.  We do not seem to realize it, but the importance of the pleasures of life which cannot be bartered in, has its noticeable effect on the mind.  Horace remarked this ages ago, and Dr. Johnson has thus translated the thoughts hinging upon it:  “Howsoever every man may complain occasionally,” says he, “of the hardships of his condition, he is seldom willing to change it for any other on the same level.  Whether it be that he who follows an employment, chose it at first on account of its suitableness to his inclination; or that when accident, or the determination of others, have pleased him in a particular station, he, by endeavoring to reconcile himself to it, gets the custom of viewing it only on the fairest side; or whether every man thinks that class to which he belongs the most illustrious, merely

BECAUSE HE HAS HONORED IT WITH HIS NAME—­

it is certain that, whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong and active prejudice, in favor of their own vocation, always working upon their minds and influencing their action.”  Let us be thankful for that laughable egotism which is born with us, and within us, and which, in this natural and unobtrusive affair of contentment, becomes a true anchor, holding us inside the peaceful haven.

AMBITION.

     Marble may rise from crystal waters spanned
     By other marbles:  founts may plash on stone,
     And fashionably-branched trees may stand
     As thieves upon a scaffold.  Yet, how cold! 
     How cold!

We are made up of elements.  These elements should be well balanced.  The delicacy of equilibrium is what makes the perfect man, or, rather, the honorable man.  Too much avarice makes a contemptibly mean man; not enough makes a foolish spendthrift, who is always appealing to his friends for help.  Too much bravery in man makes a bully; not enough a coward.  Too much speech in man makes a bore; not enough a “stick.”  Too much hope in man makes a speculator and a gambler; not enough, a hermit and a man-hater.  So of ambition.  It is a flame to be guarded—­a willing slave, an unpitying master.  In its full sway it is the very essence of self-conceit and selfishness,—­two traits, a little of which goes a good way.  You know that you do not put much blueing into a washtub full of water.  Well, use ambition in the same sparing way.  If you spill it in using it, you will have a difficult affair on your hands.  It may be just possible, of course, that you have clothes to wash, so to speak, which require the whole box or bottle.  If so, your chance of happiness is not great.