However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and
call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when
you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant,
thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is
reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from
the rich manÂ’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the
spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there,
and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The townÂ’s poor seem
to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they
are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think
that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener
happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest
means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty
like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get
new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them.
Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your
thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined
to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world
would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.
The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can
take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most
abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek
so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences
to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness
reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness
gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are
often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of
Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially
the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if
you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but
confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled
to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the
most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are
defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by
magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities
only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
