FINAL CHAPTER 333 



is as easy for you to sack your master as it is for him to sack 

 you. You reply, " But I cannot afford to lose my billet.'* He 

 will not sack you even if you are not the best of workers. He 

 will put up with you in the hopes that you may improve ; a 

 good master would sack you sooner than take the trouble to 

 teach you. Your master has proved himself a success or he 

 would not be a master. If you wish to be a success, copy his 

 good points, not his mean ones. It is good experience to learn 

 the latter, it will keep you from falling into them yourself, 

 and when you do succeed, may make you a good master 

 instead of a bad one. So learn this lesson to put up with the 

 inconvenience of the situation till you can get a better one, 

 then give your employer the sack ; he might give you the sack 

 if he got a better workman at the same wage. 



Do not sack him till you get a better place, and remem- 

 ber that a recommendation from a hard master is the best of 

 references, and more likely to get you promotion than a dozen 

 references from easy employers ; so it cuts both. ways. Do 

 not turn up your nose at the low wages you receive at the 

 start. Jack did not. He was not such a fool, but he worked 

 all the harder to get a rise in wages, and soon got it. Do 

 not start by grumbling at the faults found with you. It will 

 do you good when you are young, and help to make you con- 

 tented when you grow old. But do not leave a good master 

 if you have the luck to have one ; this is the greatest of all 

 blessings. For two out of three of us make a success of our 

 lives till we are forty-five and lose all we make after that 

 age by trying to make a new start in life when we are too 

 old and too out of date to compete with younger and more 

 up-to-date men, instead of keeping what we have got. 



Be a good father to your children, and teach them, 

 above all things else, that their first duty is to sacrifice 

 for the good of others, not in money, but in kind words, 

 kind acts and forgiveness, combined with energy and 

 usefulness; and if you have done this they will become suc- 

 cesses, and if there is any good in them at all, they will not 

 leave you in want in your old age. Content, not wealth, 

 makes happiness. No insult from those you are in duty 

 bound to respect is too high a price to pay for the attainment 

 of the virtue of content, for without it you never will be 

 happy. 



