Franklin, in a letter, finished by saying—“In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the market. It depends chiefly on two words—industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets, necessary expenses excepted, will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavours, doth not, in His wise providence, determine otherwise.” Again, in a time of scarcity, as an infallible receipt for filling empty purses, Franklin wrote—“First, let honesty and industry be thy constant companions; and, secondly, spend one penny less than thy clear gains.” Samuel Budgett, well-known as the successful merchant, when about ten years of age, began, at Coleford, to lay the foundation of his fame and fortune. He thus describes how he first got money—“I went,” he said, “to the mills of Kilmersdon to school, a distance of three miles. One day, on my way, I picked up a horse-shoe, and carried it about three miles, and sold it to a blacksmith for a penny; that was the first penny I ever recollect possessing, and I kept it for some time. A few weeks after, the same man called my attention to a boy who was carrying off some dirt opposite his door, and offered, if I would beat the boy by doing it quicker, he being a bigger boy than myself, to give me a penny. I did so; he made a mark upon it, and promised me that if I would bring it to him that day fortnight he would give me another. I took it to him at the appointed time, when he fulfilled his promise, and I thus became possessed of threepence; since then I have never been without, except when I gave it all away.” “One,” writes his admiring biographer, the Rev. W. Budgett, “would not have imagined, in seeing the little schoolboy stop and look at the old horse-shoe, that the turning-point of his life had come; but so it was; he converts that horse-shoe into his first penny, and never more wants a penny. Those men whom we see often without a penny, have all of them passed by the horse-shoe in their path when they were boys; and those other men who, from nothing, are rising rapidly, have all had the sense to pick up the horse-shoe, and turn it into the foundation of a fortune. Paths vary; but every boy, if his eyes are open, will certainly find the horse-shoe in his path at one point or another.”