ECONOMY. 
9 
should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and 
recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. 
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on 
fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate han¬ 
dling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another 
thus tenderly. 
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to 
live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I 
have no doubt that some of you who read this book are 
unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actual¬ 
ly eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wear¬ 
ing or are already worn out, and have come to this page 
to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors 
of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneak¬ 
ing lives many of you live, for my sight has been whet¬ 
ted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get 
into business and trying to get out of debt, a very an¬ 
cient slough, called by the Latins ces alienum , another’s 
brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still 
living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; al¬ 
ways promising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, 
and dying to-day, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to 
get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison 
offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves 
into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere 
of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may per¬ 
suade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his 
hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries 
for him ; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up 
something against a sick day, something to be tucked 
away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plas¬ 
tering, or, more safely, in the brick bank ; no matter 
where, no matter how much or how little. 
