they had used good sense in guarding their earnings. Every child should have an allowance of some kind, if it is not more than five or ten cents a week, so that he will early know what money means. Instead of buying things for your children, let them, whenever possible, make their own purchases out of their allowance and under your direction. Let them feel the sacrifice they must make in parting with their money; that they cannot spend it and have it too. This should be especially emphasized in the purchase of candy, ice cream, or when money is spent in other in other ways for their own. pleasure. It is an excellent thing to make young people realize the value of money, not to hoard it for its own sake, but to know how to spend it wisely, and to understand what a great power it is. The Board of Education of New York City has already made a beginning in teaching the school children to finance themselves. It has established penny banks in the public schools, with the object of making the pupils thrifty as well as wise. The Board wants "to remove inducements to extravagance and to encourage the children to take care of their pennies until their savings have reached an amount that will enable them to open individual accounts with the banks." One of the finest things I know of is a savings bank-book—there are no microbes in it to steal away your peace of mind. It is a guarantee of competence and a letter of credit wherever you go. The man with "the bank-book habit" seldom gets laid off; he's the one who can get along without you, but you cannot get along without him. The bank-book habit means sound sleep, good digestion, cool judgment, and manly independence. To get the "bank-book habit" is to conserve your funds, to protect your character, to bring order into your life and defy the ravages and revenges of time. Samuel Smiles says, "There is something about a bank account which makes a man move about among his fellows with a little more confidence. It has saved the shedding of many a tear, relieved the pain of many an aching heart." Why not start the habit to-day? No matter how few your dollars at the start—make the start. The possession of a bank account, however small, gives a wonderful sense of independence and power. The consciousness that we have a little ready money adds greatly to our comfort and increases a hundred per cent. our assurance and selfconfidence. A story is told of a clergyman, one of the many overworked and underpaid members of his profession in this country, who had hard work to make both ends meet, and who for several successive weeks went on Saturday night to one of his parishioners and borrowed five dollars, which he always paid promptly the following Monday morning. The parishioner, curious to know why he did this, began to mark the bill he loaned, and found that he always received the same one back. Then he ventured to ask his pastor why he borrowed the money, and this was the reply: "You know, Mr. that I can preach better when I feel I have got a little something back of me!" Now, if the mere fact of having a borrowed five dollar bill in his pocket could not only make a man feel better, but also make him do better work, what would not the actual ownership of five dollars ready money, or better still five hundred, do for him? How often does the possession of a few hundred dollars give a chance for a wise investment, or put us in a position to take advantage of special opportunities! How often have men doubled or trebled their savings by happening to have a little ready money when some very unusual chance came to them! I have known of a number of people who have made quite large fortunes because they happened to have two or three, or five, thousand dollars ready cash with which to make an investment. A little money in the bank is a great friend both in time of need and in time of opportunity. Many people completely fail in life or are forced to live in mortifying poverty, to struggle along perhaps under the curse of debt, miserable, and handicapped all their lives because they never learned how to finance themselves. They never learned the value of money or the necessity of thrift. A schoolboy being asked to state the greatest event of the year, said that it was the fact that he had saved fifty dollars. And from one point of view he was not so wide of the mark. The first fifty dollars he saves is really one of the most important things in anybody's life. The very idea of a constantly increasing savings account of some kind, whether in the form of a bank account, an insurance policy, or some other investment, will tend to develop a conviction in the youth that a habit of this sort is absolutely imperative, that it is the only way to safeguard life against accident, to insure comfort and independence in his old age, and to provide against all sorts of misfortune which but for this might place him in most unfortunate conditions. Many thousands of people who are poor today, living from hand to mouth, without homes, have earned money enough to have made them independent if they had used good sense in guarding their earnings. If you merely earn a living and save nothing during your few productive years, what will you do when you have reached the period of diminishing returns; what will become of you and those dependent on you if you have not stored up something for life's winter? You will be among those |