Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — The Economy of Life. [ARTICLE]

The Economy of Life.

The true economy of human life looksat ends rather than incidents, and adjusts expenditures to a moral scale of values. De Quincey pictures a woman sailing over awakening out of sleep to find her necklace untied, and one end hanging over the stream, while pearl after pearl drops from the string beyond her reach; while she clutches at one just falling, another drops beyond recovery. Our days drop one after another by our carelessness, like pearls from a string, as we sail the sea of life. Prudence requires a wise husbanding of time to see that none of these golden coins are spent for nothing. The waste of time is a more serious loss than the extravagances against which there is such loud acclaim. There are thousands who do nothing but lounge and carouse from morning till midnight—drones in the human hive who consume and waste the honey that honest workers wear themselves out in making, and insult the day by their dissipation and debauch. There are 10,000 idle, frivolous creatures who do nothing but consume, and waste and wear what honest hands accumulate, and entice others to live as useless and worthless lives as they do. Were every man and woman honest toilers, all would have an abundance of everything, and half of every day for recreation and culture. The expenditure of a few dollars in matters of taste is a small matter in comparison with the wasting of months and years by thousands who have every advantage society can offer, and exact every privilege it affords as a right. — Northwestern Christian Advocate.