ollar spent a day for twelve days makes six dollars, and six
dollars added to sixteen amount to twenty-two. Now, have I not
calculated it fairly?"

"I believe you have," replied Johnson, in an altered tone. "But I
never could have believed it."

"Add to this, thirteen dollars a year that you pay for oysters, and
you have--"

"Not so fast, if you please. I spend no such sum as you name, in
oysters."

"Let us try our multiplication again," coolly remarked the friend.
"Twenty-five cents a week multiplied into fifty-two weeks, gives
exactly thirteen dollars. Isn't it so?"

"Humph! I believe you are right. But I never would have thought of
it."

"Add this thirteen dollars to the twenty-two it costs you for twelve
holidays in the year, and this again to the price of your beer and
tobacco, and you will have just sixty-one dollars a year that might
be saved. A little more careful examination into your expenses,
would, no doubt, detect the sum of fourteen dollars that might be as
well saved as not, which added to the sixty-one dollars, will make
seventy-five dollars a year uselessly spent, the exact sum I am able
to put into the Savings' Bank."

Johnson was both surprised and mortified, at being thus convinced of
actually spending nearly one-fifth of his entire earnings in
self-gratification of one kind or another. He promised both himself
and his friend, that he would at once reform matters, and try to get
a little a-head, as he had a growing family that would soon be much
more expensive than it was at present.

Some months afterward, the friend who had spoken so freely to
Johnson, met him coming out of a tavern, and in the act of putting
tobacco in his mouth. The latter looked a little confused, but said
with as much indifference as he could assume:

"You see I am at my old tricks again?"

"Yes, and I am truly sorry for it. I was in hopes you were going to
practice a thorough system of economy, in order to get beforehand."

"I did try, but it's no use. As to giving up tobacco, that is out of
the question. I can't do it. Nor could you, if you had ever formed
the bad habit of chewing or smoking."

"We can do almost any thing, if we try hard enough, Johnson. We
fail, because we give up trying. My tobacco and cigars used to cost
me just twice what yours cost you, and yet I made a resolution to
abandon the use of the vile weed altogether, and what is better,
have kept my resolution. So, you see, the thing can be do