Excellent Cure for Extravagance, and Especially for Mistaken Economy.

When you find that you have no surplus at the end of the year, and yet have a good income, I advise you to take a few sheets of paper and form them into a book and mark down every item of expenditure. Post it every day or week in two columns, one headed necessaries or even comforts, and the other headed luxuries, and you will find that the latter column will be double, treble, and frequently ten times greater than the former.

The real comforts of life cost but a small portion of what most of us can earn. It is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself l should not care for fine clothes or furniture. In America many persons like to repeat we are all free and equal, but it is a great mistake in more senses than one.
That we are born free and equal is a glorious truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be.

One may say; there is a man who has an income of fifty thousand dollars per annum, while I have but one thousand dollars; I knew that fellow when he was poor like myself; now he is rich and thinks he is better than I am; I will show him that I am as good as he is; I...