Your Estate.
It should be the ambition of every man to leave some goodly property behind him. The industry of a lifetime should manifest itself in a substantial accumulation. We work hard enough, we Americans, to have something to show for it.
It is said, however, that eighty per cent of the population of the United States leave no estate at death. Of course a large number of these are not at all to blame, but rather society is to blame in allowing men and women to work for insufficient pay. Greedy employers are sometimes to blame, but oftener a greedy public, unwilling to pay for goods as much as they are worth, and perpetually hunting for bargains. Sickness and similar misfortunes account for other cases of failure to leave estates.
But after all these discounts are made the remainder is far too large. It means that most of our people that should save, if only a little, and save regularly, do not save at all. They lavish upon the day the entire proceeds of the day, careless of their own future and the future of their loved ones.
Saving is not easy, especially in this spendthrift age. It requires forethought, will-power, and self-denial. But these qualities are well worth cultivating in themselves, even aside from the happy result of a comfortable account in the savings-bank.
And the best of prudent saving is that thereby you are enabled to give.
Our Big Little Savings.
It is said that the national Bureau of Engraving and Printing uses every day from twenty to twenty-five miles of twenty-two-inch cloth just in wiping surplus ink from the plates used in printing bills and postage-stamps. After a single using, the cloth must be thrown away. But now a company in Virginia buys these discarded cloths, and gets from them every year 3,500,000 pounds of fine ink, black, green, red, and orange. These inks the company transforms into pastes and ready-mixed paints of all colors, and turns a handsome penny by the operation, besides enriching the United States government.
This is a lesson we all sadly need in our daily lives, the lesson of economy. How much waste time we wipe off of our daily work and play! How much waste effort we throw into the scrap-basket of our lives! How much waste emotion, waste thought, waste manhood and womanhood, goes on to the rubbish-heap from our heedless years!
It is because we do not plan carefully and wisely. We do not husband our resources. We print our hours and days from a lavish press as if paper and ink were ours from an exhaustless storehouse and at no cost. Then, the first thing we know, a staggering bill is presented. Perhaps we find bankruptcy facing us,—bankruptcy of health, or of ideas, or of courage, or of faith. There are many bankruptcies worse than the financial kind.
Let us save the waste ink. Let us save all the odds and ends. Let us utilize the fragments. As in Christ's miracle, they will make twelve basketfuls, and they will feed us for many days.
The Tree I Saved—and Who Wants It?
We all were very sorry when the tree died. It was a great oak, the best tree in the yard, because it stood close to the southwest corner of our house and sheltered it in the hot summer afternoons. We could have spared any other tree more readily.
And there seemed no reason why it should die. Insects had not attacked it, on the outside or within. When we came to cut it down, we found it firm and solid, through and through. Yet on successive years its leaves grew fewer and turned brown earlier, till at last we became certain that the tree was dead.
The cutting down was a long process, as I insisted upon the digging up of the roots. The tree, too, was so tall that even after the lopping of branches it greatly injured another tree in its crashing fall. And as for the sawing and splitting, that was a tedious and laborious task.
But our only comfort in all this, our only recompense for the loss of our old friend, was the prospect of burning him up! We gloated in the thought of a full cellar, and of abundant supplies for our hearths. Now we could have cheerful wood fires without a thought of the cost. We exulted in visions of bursting flames and beds of glowing embers just right for the pop-corn. Our pleased anticipations increased as the great piles began to stretch across the cellar, ceiling high, and rank upon rank. And when all was done, and the last chip gathered, we gazed upon our stores with the feeling of millionaires.
That was five years ago, and, if you will believe me, that wood is in my cellar yet, practically untouched.
We have enjoyed many a wood fire in the early fall, but as soon as steady cold comes, we must have the central furnace, and the whole house must be warmed; a hearth fire here and there will not answer. Besides, to tell the truth, carrying armfuls of wood up from the cellar ceases to be fun after a very few days of it.
The cutting down of an occasional small tree, or the cutting off of a limb here and there, together with the copious leavings of carpenters making repairs or alterations in the house, have added to the cellar stock of wood quite as fast as the wood fires have diminished it, so that our cellar is still choked to suffocation with our old friend, the Tree. Windows are darkened, passageways are blocked up, there is no room for barrels or boxes or tools. There was not a week, probably, in the past three years, in which I did not heartily wish that we had made a bonfire of that tree, or sold it, or given it away—anything rather than save it.
It is so hard to know what to keep and what to discard! Our attic is crammed with old furniture, boxes of cloth neatly rolled up, trunks full of memorials of other days, and bushels —literally—of newspaper clippings. And my mind and my life are equally full of useless lumber, bits of unused information, abilities gathering the dust, memories and inspirations unutilized, plans never carried out and friendships merely stored away for a possible season of enjoyment.
As I attempt to work in my cellar I labor with a stifled feeling, with nothing of the ease and freedom that come from simple and unfretted surroundings. And I feel just the same way when I get into the workshop of my mind. My life is packed with odds and, ends, hoarded in the thought that they may come in handy, sometime.
Shall I ever have the courage to clear out my cellar, and my life? to start fresh, with a wide sweep of open floor and with newly whitewashed walls against which nothing is piled? It will be a glorious day when I do.
For hoarding is not prudence, and gluttony is not thrift, and all that is stored but never used serves merely to clog the circulation of the life, and render all its activities more sluggish and cramped. It is a great thing to know how to save, but it is even greater to know how to throw away wisely.