A Scotch minister, preaching against the love of money, had frequently repeated that it was "the root of all evil." Walking home from the church one old person said to another, "An wasna the minister strang upon the money?" "Nae doubt," said the other, and added, "Ay, but it's grand to hae the wee bit siller in your hand when ye gang an errand." So too, in spite of all that love-in-a-cottage theorists may say, "it's grand to hae the wee bit siller" when marrying; unless, indeed, we believe that mortality is one of the effects of matrimony as did the girl, who, on meeting a lady whose service she had lately left, and being asked, "Well, Mary, where do you live now?" answered, "Please, ma'am, I don't live now--I'm married." To marry for love and work for silver is quite right, but there should be a reasonable chance of getting work to do and some provision for a rainy day. It is only the stupidity which is without anxiety, that complacently marries on "nothing a week; and that uncertain--very!" And yet such flying in the face of Providence is often spoken of as being disinterested and heroic, and the quiverfuls of children resulting from it are supposed to be blessed. As if it were a blessing to give children appetites of hunger and thirst, and nothing to satisfy them. On the other hand, there is some truth in the saying that "what will keep one will keep two." There are bachelors who are so ultra-prudent, and who hold such absurd opinions as to the expense of matrimony that, although they have enough money they have not enough courage to enter the state. Pitt used to say that he could not afford to marry, yet his butcher's bill was so enormous that some one has calculated it as affording his servants about fourteen pounds of meat a day, each man and woman! For the more economical regulation of his household, if for no other reason, he should have taken to himself a wife. Newly-married people should be careful not to pitch their rate of expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it; and they should remember that, as Lord Bacon said, "it is less dishonourable to abridge petty charges (expenses) than to stoop to petty gettings." That was excellent advice which Dr. Johnson gave to Boswell when the latter inherited his paternal estate: "You, dear sir, have now a new station, and have, therefore, new cares and new employments. Life, as Cowley seems to say, ought to resemble a well-ordered poem; of which one rule generally received is, that the exordium should be simple, and should promise little. Begin your new course of life with the least show, and the least expense possible; you may at pleasure increase both, but you cannot easily diminish them. Do not think your estate your own, while any man can call upon you for money which you cannot pay; therefore begin with timorous parsimony. Let it be your first care not to be in any man's debt."