th Davis,
who is just going to Australia; and then I went to the lodge."

"Well, how many glasses had you there?"

"How can I tell? I forget. But it's all stuff and nonsense, Bill!"

"Oh, you can't tell: you don't know what you spent? I believe you. But
that's the way your pennies go, my lad."

"And that's all your secret?"

"Yes; take care of the penny--that's all. Because I save, I have, when
you want. It's very simple, isn't it?"

"Simple, oh yes; but there's nothing in it."

"Yes! there's this in it,--that it has made you ask me the question, how
I manage to keep my family so comfortably, and put money in the Penny
Bank, while you, with the same wages, can barely make the ends meet.
Money is independence, and money is made by putting pennies together.
Besides, I work so hard for mine,--and so do you,--that I can't find it
in my heart to waste a penny on drink, when I can put it beside a few
other hard-earned pennies in the bank. It's something for a sore foot or
a rainy day. There's that in it, Jack; and there's comfort also in the
thought that, whatever may happen to me, I needn't beg nor go to the
workhouse. The saving of the penny makes me feel a free man. The man
always in debt, or without a penny beforehand, is little better than a
slave."

"But if we had our rights, the poor would not be so hardly dealt with as
they now are."

"Why, Jack, if you had your rights to-morrow, would they put your money
back into your pocket after you had spent it?--would your rights give
your children shoes and stockings when you had chosen to waste on beer
what would have bought them? Would your rights make you or your wife,
thriftier, or your hearthstone cleaner? Would rights wash your
children's faces, and mend the holes in your clothes? No, no, friend!
Give us our rights by all means, but _rights are not habits_, and it's
habits we want--good habits. With these we can be free men and
independent men _now_, if we but determine to be so. Good night, Jack,
and mind my secret,--it's nothing but _taking care of the pennies_, and
the pounds will take care of themselves."

"Good-night!" And Jack turned off at the lane-end towards his humble and
dirty cottage in Main's Court. I might introduce you to his home,--but
"home" it could scarcely be called. It was full of squalor and
untidiness, confusion and dirty children, where a slattern-looking woman
was scolding. Ransom's cottage, On the contrary, _was_ a home. It was
snug,