Self Help; with Illustrations of Conduct and PerseveranceSmiles, Samuel
Philosophy
Self Help; with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance
Smiles, Samuel
Conduct of life
be desired are not to be compared to it.”
Simple industry and thrift will go far towards making any person of
ordinary working faculty comparatively independent in his means. Even a
working man may be so, provided he will carefully husband his resources,
and watch the little outlets of useless expenditure. A penny is a very
small matter, yet the comfort of thousands of families depends upon the
proper spending and saving of pennies. If a man allows the little
pennies, the results of his hard work, to slip out of his fingers—some to
the beershop, some this way and some that—he will find that his life is
little raised above one of mere animal drudgery. On the other hand, if
he take care of the pennies—putting some weekly into a benefit society or
an insurance fund, others into a savings’ bank, and confiding the rest to
his wife to be carefully laid out, with a view to the comfortable
maintenance and education of his family—he will soon find that this
attention to small matters will abundantly repay him, in increasing
means, growing comfort at home, and a mind comparatively free from fears
as to the future. And if a working man have high ambition and possess
richness in spirit,—a kind of wealth which far transcends all mere
worldly possessions—he may not only help himself, but be a profitable
helper of others in his path through life. That this is no impossible
thing even for a common labourer in a workshop, may be illustrated by the
remarkable career of Thomas Wright of Manchester, who not only attempted
but succeeded in the reclamation of many criminals while working for
weekly wages in a foundry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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