Part 17

All species of intemperance grow of a want of self-control. To be a temperance man a man must master himself, must be a brave, noble conqueror of every enemy within his own bosom. It is no small matter. It is the masterpiece of human attainments. The laws of temperance can never be broken with impunity. The excess is committed to-day, but the effect is experienced to-morrow. The law of nature, invariable in its operation, is, that penalty shall follow excess. The punishment is mild at first, but afterwards more and more severe, until, when nature's warning voice has been unheeded and her punishments disregarded, the final penalty is death. If an admonitory sign-board were hung out for the benefit of the young, there should be inscribed upon it in prominent characters "_no excess_." It is to be remembered that the best principles, if pushed too far, degenerate into fatal vices. Generosity is nearly allied to extravagance; charity itself may lead to ruin; the sternness of justice is but one step removed from the severity of oppression.

If one would make the most of life he must be temperate in all things. It is the application of reason to all the daily acts of life. It is the highest and best form of life that one can attain to. It leads not only to the greatest happiness, but also to honor and position. By abstaining from most things it is surprising how many things we enjoy. To establish thoroughly and widely the principles of temperance we must begin with the youth. They have a high aspiration to be good and true. They see a glory in the path of right. Freedom is a word of power in their ears. Virtue has many charms not only for their hearts, but for their imaginations. They have health, competency, and happiness. They are ambitious of every good. When the true principles of temperance are established in early life and made the controlling power through life, they insure health, freedom from pain, competency, respectability, honor, virtue, usefulness, and happiness—all for which true men have or hope in this life. Happy would it be if they were general and all youths would practice them. Then would religion assert her mild and gentle sway, peace plant her olive wreath in every nation, wisdom, divine and time-honored, shed every-where her glorious light. A race of men and women, full of rosy health, strong, active, symmetrical, beautiful as the artist's model: pure, virtuous, wise, affectionate, full of honor and lofty principles, would grow up into communities and nations, and make the earth bloom and rejoice in more than Eden gladness. A new heaven and a new earth would surround us with beauty and arch us over with glory, for the old would have passed away.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty and Ease. It is synonymous with economy, and is a sound understanding brought into action. It is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion educed to practice. It is foreseeing contingencies and providing against them. Its other and less reputable sisters are Avarice and Prodigality. She alone keeps the straight and safe path, while Avarice sneers at her as profuse, and Prodigality scorns at her as penurious. To the poor she is indispensable; to those of moderate means she is found the representative of wisdom. Joined to industry and sobriety, she is a better outfit to business than a dowry. She conducts her votaries to competence and honor, while Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt.

Frugality shineth in her best light when joined to liberality. The first consists in leaving off superfluous expense; the last is bestowing them to the benefit of those that need. The first without the last begets covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality. There is ever a golden mean between frugality and stinginess, or closeness. He that spareth in every thing is an inexcusable niggard; he that spareth in nothing is an inexcusable madman. The golden mean of frugality is to spare in what is least necessary, and to lay out more liberally in what is most required in our several circumstances. It is no man's duty to deny himself every amusement, every recreation, every comfort, that he may get rich. It is no man's duty to make an iceberg of himself, and to deny himself the enjoyment that results from his generous actions, merely that he may hoard wealth for his heirs to quarrel about. But there is an economy which is especially commendable in the man who struggles with poverty, and is every man's duty—an economy which is consistent with happiness, and which must be practiced if the poor man would secure independence.

When one is blessed with good sense and fair opportunities, this spirit of economy is one of the most beneficial of all secular gifts, and takes high rank among the minor virtues. It is by this mysterious power that the loaf is multiplied, that using does not waste, that little becomes much, that scattered fragments grow to unity, and that out of nothing, or next to nothing, comes the miracle of something. Frugality is not merely saving, still less parsimony. It is foresight and combination. It is insight and arrangement. It is a subtle philosophy of things, by which new uses, new compositions, are discovered. It causes inert things to labor, useless things to serve our necessities, perishing things to renew their vigor, and all things to exert themselves for human comfort.

As the acquisition of knowledge depends more upon what a man _remembers_ than upon the quantity of his reading, so the acquisition of property depends more upon what is _saved_ than upon what is earned. The largest reservoir, though fed by abundant and living springs, will fail to supply their owners with water if secret leaking-places are permitted to drain off their contents. In like manner, though by his skill and energy a man may convert his business into a flowing Pactolus, ever depositing its golden sands in his coffers, yet, through the numerous wants of unfrugal habits, he may live embarrassed and die poor. Economy is the guardian of property, the good genius whose presence guides the footsteps of every prosperous and successful man.

Either a man must be content with poverty all his life, or else be willing to deny himself some luxuries, and save to lay the base of independence in the future. But if a man defies the future, and spends all that he earns, whether it be much or little, let him look for lean and hungry want at some future time; for it will surely come, no matter what he thinks. To economize and be frugal is absolutely the only way to get a solid fortune; there is no other certain mode on earth. Those who shut their eyes and ears to these plain facts will be forever poor. Fortune does not give away her real and substantial goods. She sells them to the highest bidder, to the hardest, wisest worker for the boon. Men never make so fatal a mistake as when they think they are mere creatures of fate; it is the sheerest folly in the world. Every man may make or mar his life, whichever he may choose. Fortune is for those who, by diligence, honesty and frugality, place themselves in a position to grasp hold of fortune when it appears in view.

Simple industry and thrift will go far towards making any person of ordinary working faculties comparatively independent in his means. Almost any working-man may be so, provided he will carefully husband his resources and watch the little outlets of useless expenditures. A penny is a very small matter, yet the comfort of thousands of families depends upon the proper saving and spending of pennies. If a man allows the little pennies—the results of his hard work—to slip out of his fingers he will find that his life is little raised above one of mere animal drudgery.

One way in which true economy is shown consists in living within one's income. This is the grand element of success in acquiring property. To carry it out requires resolution, self-denial, self-reliance. But it must be done, or grinding poverty will accompany you through life. We urge upon all young men who are just starting in life to make it an invariable rule to lay aside a certain proportion of their income, whatever that income may be. Extravagant expenditures occasion a large part of the suffering of a great majority of people. And extravagance is wholly a relative term. What is not at all extravagant for one person may be very much so for another. Expenditures, no matter how small in themselves they may be, are always extravagant when they come fully up to the entire amount of a person's income.

On every hand we see people living on credit, putting off pay-day to the last, making, in the end, some desperate effort—generally by borrowing—to scrape the money together, and then struggling on again with the canker of care eating at their hearts; but their exertions are vain; they land at last in the inevitable goal of bankruptcy. If they would only be content to make the push in the beginning, instead of the end, they would save themselves all this misery. The great secret of being solvent and well-to-do and comfortable is to get ahead of your expenses. Eat and drink this month what you earned last month, not what you are going to earn next month. It is unsafe to draw drafts on the future, for hope is deceitful, and your paper is liable to go to protest. When one is once weighed down with a load of debt he loses the sense of being free and independent. The man with his fine house, his glittering carriage, and his rich banquets, for which he is in debt, is a slave, a prisoner, dragging his chains behind him through all the grandeur of the false world through which he moves.

In urging a course of strict economy we admit that it is hard, embarrassing, perplexing, onerous, but it is by no means impracticable. A cool survey of one's expenditures, compared with his income; a wise balancing of ends to be gained; a firm and calm determination to break with custom wherever it is opposed to good sense, and a patience that does not chafe at small and gradual results, will do much towards establishing the principle of economy and securing its benefits. Economy has, however, deeper roots than even this—in the desires. It is there, after all, that we control our expenditures. As a general rule we may be sure that we shall spend our money for what we most earnestly crave. If it be luxury and display then it will melt into costly viands and soft clothing, handsome dwellings and rich furniture. If, on the other hand, our desires are for higher enjoyments, or for benevolent purposes, our money will flow into these channels. Every one, then, who cherishes in himself, or excites in others, a desire more pure and noble than existed before, who draws the heart from the craving of sense to those of soul, from self to others, from what is low, sensual, and wrong to what is pure, elevating, and right, in so far establishes, on the firmest of all foundations, a wise economy.

A true economy appears to induce the exertion of almost every laudable emotion; a strict regard to honesty; a laudable spirit of independence; a judicious prudence in providing for the wants, and a steady benevolence in preparing for the claims of the future. Such an economy can but appeal to the good sense of all who candidly ponder over life and its realities. To spend all that you acquire as soon as you gain it is to lead a butterfly existence. Were you always to be young and free from sickness and care, and life were to pass as one perpetual Summer, it would do no harm to so live; but care will come, sickness may strike you at any time, and, if you escape these, yet you know life has its Autumnal and Winter seasons as well as its Summer. And, alas! for the veteran who finds himself obliged to learn in his latter years the lessons of strict economy for the first time, having lived in utter defiance of them in the season of youth and strength.

Patience is the ballast of the soul, that will keep it from rolling and tumbling in the greatest storms. All life is but one vast representation of the beauty and value of patience. Troubles and sorrows are in store for all. It is useless to try to escape them, and, indeed, it is well we can not, as they seem essential to the perfection and development of character into its highest and best form. But their disciplinary value arises from the great lesson of patience they are constantly inculcating.

Either patience must be a quality graciously inherent in the heart of man, or it must be acquired as the lesson of years' experience, if he would enjoy the greatest good of life. Without it prosperity will be continually disturbed, and adversity will be clouded with double darkness. The loud complaint, the querulous temper and fretful spirit disgrace every character. We weaken thereby the sympathy of others, and estrange them from offices of kindness and comfort. But to maintain a steady and unbroken mind amidst all the shocks of adversity forms the highest honor of man. Afflictions supported by patience and surmounted by fortitude give the last finishing stroke to the heroic and virtuous character. Patience produces unity in the Church, loyalty in the state, harmony in families and societies. She comforts the poor and moderates the rich; she makes us humble in prosperity, cheerful in adversity, unmoved by calumny, and above reproach; she teaches us to forgive those who have injured us, and to be the first in asking the forgiveness of those whom we have injured; she delights the faithful, and invites the unbelieving; she adorns the woman and approves the man; she is beautiful in either sex and every age.

Patience has been defined as the "courage of virtue;" the principle which enables us to lessen the pains of mind or body; an emotion that does not so much add to the number of our joys as it tends to diminish the number of our sufferings. If life is made to abound with pains and troubles by the errors and the crimes of man, it is no small advantage to have a faculty that enables us to soften these pains and ameliorate these troubles. He that has patience can have what he will. There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste. There are no honors too distant for the man who prepares himself for them with patience. Nature herself abounds with examples of patience. Day follows the murkiest night, and when the time comes the latest fruits also ripen. Its most beneficent operations, and those which take place on a grand scale, are the results of patience. The great works of human power, achieved by the hand of genius, are but eloquent examples of what may be achieved by the exercise of this virtue. History and biography abound with examples of signal patience shown by great men under trying circumstances.

In the pursuit of worldly success patience or a willingness to bide one's time is no less necessary as a factor than perseverance. Says De Maistre, "To know how to wait is the great secret of success." And of all the lessons that humanity teaches in this school of the world, the hardest is to wait. Not to wait with folded hands that claim life's prizes without previous effort, but having toiled and struggled and crowded the slow years with trial to see then no results, or, perhaps, disastrous results, and yet to stand firm, to preserve one's poise, and relax no effort,—this, it has been truly said, _is_ greatness, whether achieved by man or woman. The world can not be circumnavigated by one wind. The grandest results can not be achieved in a day. The fruits that are best worth plucking usually ripen the most slowly, and, therefore, every one who would gain a solid success must learn "to labor and to wait." What a world of meaning in those few words! And how many are possessed of the moral courage to live in that state? It is the tendency of the times to be in a hurry when there is any object to be accomplished. In the pursuit of riches it is only the exceptional persons who are content with slow gains, willing to acquire wealth by adding penny to penny, dollar to dollar; the mass of business men are too apt to despise such a tedious and laborious means of ascent, and they rush headlong into schemes for the sudden acquisition of wealth. Or, in the field of professional life, we are too prone to forget there is no royal road to great acquirements, and feel an unwillingness to lay broad and deep, by years of patient study and laborious research, the foundation whereon to build an enduring monument worthy of public credit and renown.

The history of all who are honored in the world of literature, arts, or science is the history of patient study for years, and its final triumph. Elihu Burritt says: "All that I have accomplished, or expect or hope to accomplish, has been, and will be, by that patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap, particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact." Labor still is, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon every thing which is valuable. Hence, if we would acquire wisdom, we must diligently apply ourselves, and confront the same continuous application which our forefathers did. We must be satisfied to work energetically with a purpose, and wait the results with patience. All progress, of the best kind, is slow; but to him who works faithfully and in a right spirit, be sure that the reward will be vouchsafed in its own good time. Courage must have sunk in despair, and the world must have remained unimproved and unornamented if man had merely compared the effect of a single stroke of the chisel with the pyramid to be raised, or of a single impression of the spade with the mountain to be leveled. We must continuously apply ourselves to right pursuits, and we can not fail to advance steadily, though it may be unconsciously.

In all evils which admit a remedy impatience should be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints that, if properly applied, might remove the cause. In cases that admit of no remedy it is worse than useless to give way to impatience, both because of the utter uselessness of so doing as well as that the time thus spent could be better employed in the furtherance of useful designs. Since, then, these two classes of ills comprise all to which human nature is subject, why not make a determined struggle against impatience in every form? It accomplishes nothing that is of value, divides our efforts, frustrates our plans, and generally succeeds in making our lives miserable not only to ourselves, but to all around us.

How much of home happiness and comfort depends upon the exercise of patience! Not a day passes but calls for its exercise from those who sustain the nearest and dearest relations to each other. Let patience have her perfect work in the home circle. Let parents be patient with their children. They are weak, and you are strong. They stand at the eastern gate of life. Experience has not taught them to speak carefully and to go softly. What if their plays and amusements do grate upon your nerves. Bear with them patiently. Care and time will soon enough check their childish impulses. Be patient with your friends. They are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. They can not see your heart, and may misunderstand you. They do not know what is best for you, and may select what is worst. What if, also, they lack purity of purpose or tenacity of affection; do not you lack these graces? Patience is your refuge. Endure, and in enduring conquer them; and if not them, then at least yourself. Be patient with pains and cares. These things are killed by enduring them, but made strong to bite and sting by feeding them with your frets and fears. There is no pain or cure that can last long. None of them shall enter the city of God. A little while, and you shall leave behind you all your troubles, and forget, in your first hour of rest, that such things were on earth. Above all, be patient with your beloved. Love is the best thing on earth; but it is to be handled tenderly, and impatience is the nurse that kills it. Try to smooth life's weary way each for the other, and in the exercise of the heaven-born virtue of patience will you find the sweetest pleasure of life.

Self-control is the highest form of courage. It is the base of all the virtues. It is one of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind to be its own master. If he reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, he is more than a king.

Too often self-control is made to mean only the control of angry passions, but that is simply one form of self-control; in another—a higher and more complete sense—it means the control over all the passions, appetites, and impulses. True wisdom ever seeks to restrain one from blindly following his own impulses and appetites, even those which are moral and intellectual, as well as those which are animal and sensual. In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive, not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes uppermost, but to be self-restrained, self-balanced, governed by the joined decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated and calmly determined,—this is true strength and wisdom.

Mankind are endowed by the Creator with qualities which raise them infinitely higher in the scale of importance than any other members of the animal world. They are given reason as a guide to follow rather than instinct. But if men give the reins to their impulses and passions, from that moment they surrender this high prerogative. They are carried along the current of their life and become the slaves of their strongest desires for the time being. To be morally free—to be more than an animal—man must be able to resist instinctive impulses. This can only be done by the exercise of self-control. Thus it is this power that constitutes the real distinction between a physical and a moral life, and that forms the primary basis of individual character. Nine-tenths of the vicious desires that degrade society, and the crimes that disgrace it, would shrink into insignificance before the advance of valiant self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control.

It is necessary to one's personal happiness to exercise control over his words as well as his acts, for there are words that strike even harder than blows, and men may "speak daggers," even though they use none. Character exhibits itself in control of speech as much as in any thing else. The wise and forbearant man will restrain his desire to say a smart or severe thing at the expense of another's feelings, while the fool speaks out what he thinks, and will sacrifice his friend rather than his joke. There are men who are headlong in their language as in their actions because of the want of forbearance and self-restraining patience.