OF RICHES.

ONTESQUIEU also said: I should never be consoled for not having made a fortune if I was born in England; I am

not sorry for not having made one in France.

I don't care much about the headings of my chapters. I put something which will draw the curious, and I renounce all title of Englishman, if this is not a title that will stop those who turn over the leaves of this book. My chapters contain a little of everything, and so I shall make good what I promised in the beginning, without being bound to any order, which I have observed to be often only another name for disorder and confusion.

I can imagine some careful father who has read so far and thought my advice good, I can imagine the eagerness with which he will begin this chapter.

He will expect me to show him how his youngster shall grow rich. Poor man! I am going to show him how his dear boy may be better without wealth. Shall I begin by quoting Scripture to him, for which he professes such profound respect? "Give me neither poverty nor riches," said the wise man, and he said well.

Poverty brings many evils with it, it is true. But poverty is a relative term. What is poverty to one man is wealth to another. A man is more than poor, who wants that without which life cannot be sustained in comfort, and health maintained. If then I were giving advice to a young man, I would say, choose, if you can, some occupation in life suitable to your abilities and your means for pursuing it, and stick to it. Live under your income, and always put something by, and if you reach a fair age, you will find that your small savings will have made you as rich as an honest man should wish to be. I should like my youth, whom I am directing, and whom I suppose to have had a good education, to choose an occupation which will leave him a little time for reading and self-improvement; or at any rate, to find some time for such work, and in this country and climate he may easily do it. For three-fourths

of the year among us a man is better at home after his day's work is done than abroad; and some employment for the mind gives pleasure and health and keeps us from things that bring no real pleasure and injure the health. Some useful pursuit strengthens a man's mind and makes him better able to bear the crosses of life. But I say, learn something well. Waste not your time in idle reading, for a great writer says that no time is spent with less thought than great part of that which is spent in reading. He means of course what are called books and

papers of amusement. He wrote above a hundred years ago: what would he say if he lived now?

As a man cannot always be busy with serious things, he may be allowed to amuse himself sometimes, but if he is wise, he will not indulge too much in what is called light reading, so called I suppose, because it may be read without the trouble of thinking. Some of this kind of reading is however far from being light work. It can be managed by boys, who read anything, just as they can eat all kinds of rubbish, which a full grown man rejects. Young women have a mighty appetite for tales and novels, and they can find storing room for any amount of improbable fiction. If this is not one of the reasons

for the undoubted fact of the great feebleness of most women, I am much mistaken.

I have somewhere read of a traveller who spent years in visiting different parts of the world, that he might have a stock of experience and recollections to feed on when he was old. Those who cannot travel when they are young must lay up a stock of matter by reading and talking with those who can tell them something worth knowing. A man should live when he is young, as if he were some day to be old. If he does not reach old age, he will still have employed his time well; and if he does live to be old, what a dreary time it will be for him, if his mind is a blank. It will be too late then to do what he might have done earlier. Old age is often solitary. The wife or the husband is dead: children, if there have been any, may be dead too or far away, and man or woman may be left nearly alone to pass a cheerless existence of many years, which can only be made tolerable by having some occupation or some pursuit which shall lighten the heavy hours. The best occupation, I mean the best for the man who is occupied, is to be doing something if he can which shall be useful to everybody, and that will of course be useful to himself. If he cannot be useful to others, he must be

content with looking after himself; and some intellectual occupation will save him from that living death which is the life of an old age without good letters.

Wealth alone cannot give comfort in old age. It may bring occasional visitors who will eat and drink and go away. It may buy the services of domestics, but it cannot buy their affection. A rich old man who has no occupation but that of increasing his wealth runs great risk of sinking into imbecility, of which we have notable examples.

My young pupil then must not think of more than a decent provision for his old age. But how much must it be? I cannot exactly tell. That will depend somewhat on his habits and what he has been used to. But if he has any pursuits which will fully occupy him and a few friends to talk to, I can tell him that a very small income will be enough.

Some men begin life with a steady purpose to be rich, and if they get their money honestly, they certainly do better than those who have no object at all in life. A life without an object is the life of a beast. The money-maker has a pleasure in his money, and he may continue this enjoyment as long as he lives, with this warning that if he loves his gold over much,