Time,
happiness, life, these are the only things to be thrifty about. But
I see people working and worrying over quince-marmalade and tucked
petticoats and embroidered chair-covers, things that perish with the
using and leave the user worse than they found him. This I call waste
and wicked prodigality. Life is too short to permit us to fret about
matters of no importance. Where these things can minister to the mind
and heart, they are a part of the soul's furniture; but where they only
pamper the appetite or the vanity or any foolish and hurtful lust,
they are foolish and hurtful. Be thrifty of comfort. Never allow an
opportunity for cheer, for pleasure, for intelligence, for benevolence,
for any kind of good, to go unimproved. Consider seriously whether the
sirup of your preserves or the juices of your own soul will do the
most to serve your race. It may be that they are compatible,--that the
concoction of the one shall provide the ascending sap of the other; but
if it is not so, if one must be sacrificed, do not hesitate a moment
as to which it shall be. If a peach does not become sweetmeat, it will
become something, it will not stay a withered, unsightly peach; but for
souls there is no transmigration out of fables. Once a soul, forever a
soul,--mean or mighty, shrivelled or full, it is for you to say.
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