Show THE OLDS OLD SETTLER by albert n R lyman john greenleaf whittier as a youth planned in the spring to go to college he figured that it would wd take him just so many days to learn how bow to make a certain kind of shoe thia that after learning he could make them at a profit of ten cents a pair and that he could save a certain amo amount nt by the time school started with this certain amount of money he estimated that if his h i s parents would give him free board during the holiday season he could attend school and have twenty five cents left in the spring his plan carried through according to schedule lie he had bad twenty five cents left in the spring we have a stink stinking ing conte contempt mp tf for what we choose to call penurious finances whittier had to eat and to dress with rigid economy no theater tickets for him no spare cash with which tobe a good sport yet ther was something big ind and splendid about his first winter at school something in full keeping with the spirit a and dignity of his snowbound d and maud muller that big splendid thing was ther the plan the budget the unusual ability to make a purpose water tight by stopping all its little leaks and forcing in it to float benjamin t franklin dealt with big things but not before he be had bad dealt with small things his start towards those big things was made in ascertaining how he could devise a wholesome meal costing less than three cents thus enabling him to add two or three bents cents to a savings account which otherwise could not be made mada Is that penurious business let me compare my own poor achievements w with ith those of franklin before I 1 say so aloud and franklin is the sage who observed A woman can throw more out of the window with a spoon than a man can throw in in with a shovel at the door every day and almost every everywhere here people who think they are having an awfully hard bard time are ar allowing lowing 7 their pennies their nickels and their dimes to drip through the container which will have to become water tight before ever they be bein begin in to get ahead many a man whose name is associated with big finances running into the began by living on fifteen cents a day because he could malse make only twenty if he had spent the other five we never would have heard beard of him most men making but twenty ants a day figure they are heroes if they refrain from spending thirty we hate the heathen chinee we insist that his soul soui is too microscopic to be damned but that heathen chinee is is farseeing enough to understand and he is disciplinarian enough to conform to the fact that if iv it is possible to make only three cents a day he must live on two or hold no nd hole of ever being better off in the future we hate him because lie he can live and get ahead where we with our prodigal habits must starve to death or get a doe do e we rebell at the very suggestion of competing with him so we legislate against him and mob him out of the country to preserve our privileges of extravagance and the lives of poverty which we love so well and to which we are so inseparably wedded |