Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/45

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does not have such a sense. I have often wondered that the case is not more frequently put from the other side, from the side of the wrong of spending money in gambling. When a man has won on a bet the moral question is lulled but when he has lost there is a chastened mood which can be invited to reflect. What moral warrant did he have for throwing his money away? What does he have to show for it? A million hungry hands were outstretched to him, a world of want and suffering called towards him over land and sea? And he threw his money away—got nothing for it, did nothing with it. In a world like ours, there are parched lips waiting for drink; there are hungry mouths in need of bread:—do we have any right to waste in indulgence in a world like this? Men should scrutinize every dollar that passes through their hands and ask, "What is the very best thing that I can do with this?"

And frugality, self-imposed for the sake of service, will come back to us in rich reward in character and power. Horace Bushnell drew a noble picture of the fruitage of true parsimony in his address at the Litchfield County Centennial in 1851, on "The Age of Homespun":

"It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life, that it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt, a closely girded habit of economy. Harnessed, all together, into