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

of whom Walt Mason says, "Each winter the thriftless send up the old [poverty] wail, the heedless, the shiftless, the fellows who fail."

Make up your mind now that you Won't. Learn to finance yourself Now.

ARE YOU AN ORIGINAL

OR A DUPLICATE?

Don't be a copy.

The dreamers are the builders.

The man with an idea has ever changed the face of the world.

Ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. Thoughts are mightier than armies. Principles have achieved more victories than horsemen or chariots.—Paxton.

T

HE head of a great publishing company used

to say to his employees, "Don't be a duplicate; be an original." Many people have failed to do their biggest thing because they were duplicates instead of originals. They tried to be somebody else instead of themselves, and ended in being nobodies. You can be effective only when you are yourself. When you try to be somebody else, you are a weakling.

All imitated work is evidence of a lack of ability. It is a confession that one cannot do as well as the originator, that one cannot originate.

A great many people remain trailers all their lives, followers of others, imitators, mere echoes, because their distinctive qualities, their original powers, were never called out or developed.

Everywhere we see men and women who can do almost anything, under instruction, but do not seem able to think for themselves. They can imitate, copy others, go in beaten tracks, but they never dream of doing anything on their own initiative. They never do original things because they do not think. They are like a certain young woman who was grieving very much because she did not get on faster. She said she felt like a freight engine attached to a train on a sidetrack, while engines, pulling express trains, were flying past her all the time at a terrific speed. She was sure she said that these engines were not better than hers, but they all reached their destination, while hers remained sidetracked, waiting for something or some one to push it along.

Multitudes of well-educated people, with good ability, can't move their engine. There is something the matter with their initiative. They have never learned to think and act independently, and when they get to a certain point they are sidetracked in the life race. They belong to the class of which Kipling says,

"They copied all they could follow,

But they couldn't follow our mind:
And we left them sweating and stealing,
A year and a half behind."

A large proportion of men and women are like phonographs or parrots. They simply repeat the