he balance of supply and demand, and contributes to
remove industrious hands from the production of what is useful or
pleasurable and to keep them busy upon ropes of sand and things that are
a weariness to the flesh. That extravagance is truly sinful, and a very
silly sin to boot, in which we impoverish mankind and ourselves. It is
another question for each man's heart. He knows if he can enjoy what he
buys and uses; if he cannot, he is a dog in the manger; nay, if he
cannot, I contend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a man
which he cannot use. Proprietor is connected with propriety; and that
only is the man's which is proper to his wants and faculties.

A youth, in choosing a career, must not be alarmed by poverty. Want is
a sore thing, but poverty does not imply want. It remains to be seen
whether with half his present income, or a third, he cannot, in the most
generous sense, live as fully as at present. He is a fool who objects to
luxuries; but he is also a fool who does not protest against the waste
of luxuries on those who do not desire and cannot enjoy them. It remains
to be seen, by each man who would live a true life to himself and not a
merely specious life to society, how many luxuries he truly wants and to
how many he merely submits as to a social propriety; and all these last
he will immediately forswear. Let him do this, and he will be surprised
to find how little money it requires to keep him in complete contentment
and activity of mind and senses. Life at any level among the easy
classes is conceived upon a principle of rivalry, where each man and
each household must ape the tastes and emulate the display of others.
One is delicate in eating, another in wine, a third in furniture or
works of art or dress; and I, who care nothing for any of these
refinements, who am perhaps a plain athletic creature and love exercise,
beef, beer, flannel shirts and a camp bed, am yet called upon to
assimilate all these other tastes and make these foreign occasions of
expenditure my own. It may be cynical: I am sure I shall be told it is
selfish; but I will spend my money as I please and for my own intimate
personal gratification, and should count myself a nincompoop indeed to
lay out the colour of a halfpenny on any fancied social decency or duty.
I shall not wear gloves unless my hands are cold, or unless I am born
with a delight in them. Dress is my own affair, and that of one other in
the world; that, in fac