Many persons in society are usefully employed in instructing, amusing, or taking care of others. Schoolmasters instruct youth in schools, and tutors and governesses give instruction in private families. Clergymen instruct the people in their religious duties, and endeavor to persuade them to lead a good life. Authors of books, editors of newspapers, musicians, painters of pictures, and others, delight and amuse their fellow-creatures, and keep them from wearying in their hours of leisure. Unfortunately, some people, both old and young, are lazy or idle, and will not work at regular employments, and others spend improperly the most of the money which they earn. All these fall into a state of wretchedness and poverty. They become poor, and are a burden on society. Other persons are unfortunate in their business, and lose all that they have made, so that they become poor also. Persons who suffer hardships of this kind should be pitied, and treated with kindness by those who are able to help them. Many persons, besides, become poor by old age and infirmity, and it is proper that they should be taken care of and supported. A beggar is a poor person, who does not feel ashamed to seek alms. Any one who is able to labor for a subsistence, should feel ashamed either to beg or to be classed among the poor. God has taken care that the wants of all persons who labor, and lead a regular life, shall be satisfied. These wants are few in number, and consist chiefly of air, food, water, warmth, and clothing. Some of these we receive freely, but others we receive only by working for them. Some persons are contented if they can work for the bare necessaries of life. If they can get only as much plain food and coarse clothing as will keep them alive, they are contented. If a person cannot, by all his industry, earn more than the bare necessaries of life, it is right to be contented; but if he can easily earn money to buy comfortable food, comfortable clothing, and other means of comfort and rational enjoyment, it is wrong to be contented with the bare necessaries of life. It is the duty of every one to try to better his condition by skill and industry in any kind of lawful employment. Let him only take care to abstain from indulgence in vicious luxuries. One of the most vicious of luxuries is _spirits_, or liquors, which some people drink to make themselves intoxicated, or drunk. When a person is in this debased condition, his senses and intellect are gone, and he does not know what he is doing. He cannot walk, but staggers or rolls on the ground, and is a horrid spectacle to all who see him. Drunkenness is an odious vice, which leads to great misery and poverty; and the best way to avoid falling into it, is to abstain from tasting or using any spirits or intoxicating liquors. What is Poetry?