all." But Dr.
Clark seems to forget that the most of the people who try to follow his
advice, either burn their fingers or find their irons cooling faster
than they can use them. We cannot all be Clarks if we try, and to follow
this method the most of us will fail; but we can, by following one line
of procedure, at last bring success.

Extravagance of living is another prolific cause of bankruptcy. A man
imagines that by hiring a horse and driving in the park he will show
people that he is as good as the neighbor who drives his own horse. He
deludes himself with the idea that this sort of extravagance will, in
the eyes of his fellow-men, place him on an equal footing with
millionaires.

Dr. Franklin has truly said: "It is not our own eyes, but other
people's, that ruin us." It has been said that the merchant who could
live on five hundred a year, fifty years ago, now requires five
thousand. In living, avoid a "penny wise and pound foolish" custom. A
man may think he knows all about economy and yet be ignorant of its
first principles. For instance, a business man may save every imaginable
piece of writing paper, using all the dirty envelopes that come in his
way. This he does instead of using a neat letter head and clean paper,
at a slight additional cost, and vast gain in the influence which such a
letter carries over the other. Some years ago a man stopped at a farm
house over night. After tea he much desired to read, but found it
impossible from the insufficient light of one candle. Seeing his
dilemma, the hostess said: "It is rather difficult to read here
evenings; the proverb says, 'You must have a ship at sea in order to be
able to burn two candles at once.'" She would as soon have thought of
throwing a five dollar bill into the fire as of setting the example of
burning two candles at once. This woman saved, perhaps, five or six
dollars a year, but the information she thus denied her children would,
of course, out-weigh a ton of candles. But this is not the worst of it.

The business man, by such costly stinginess, consoles himself that he is
saving. As he has saved a few dollars in letter paper, he feels
justified in expending ten times that amount for some extravagance. The
man thinks he is a saving man. The woman is a saving woman, she knows
she is a saving woman. She has saved five or six dollars this year in
candles, and so feels justified in buying some needless finery, which
could gratify nothing but the