Part 13 (1/2)
”Now you have asked my secret, I'll tell you all about it. But you must not be offended if I speak plain. First, I pay nothing for my drink.”
”Nothing? Then you don't pay your shot, but sponge upon your neighbours.”
”Never! I drink water, which costs nothing. Drunken days have all their to-morrows, as the old proverb says. I spare myself sore heads and shaky hands, and save my pennies. Drinking water neither makes a man sick nor in debt, nor his wife a widow. And that, let me tell you, makes a considerable difference in our out-go. It may amount to about half-a-crown a week, or seven pounds a year. That seven pounds will clothe myself and children, while you are out at elbows and your children go barefoot.”
”Come, come, that's going too far. I don't drink at that rate. I may take an odd half-pint now and then; but half-a-crown a week! Pooh!
pooh!”
”Well, then, how much did you spend on drink last Sat.u.r.day night? Out with it.”
”Let me see: I had a pint with Jones; I think I had another with Davis, who is just going to Australia; and then I went to the lodge.”
”Well, how many gla.s.ses had you there?”
”How can I tell? I forget. But it's all stuff and nonsense, Bill!”
”Oh, you can't tell: you don't know what you spent? I believe you. But that's the way your pennies go, my lad.”
”And that's all your secret?”
”Yes; take care of the penny--that's all. Because I save, I have, when you want. It's very simple, isn't it?”
”Simple, oh yes; but there's nothing in it.”
”Yes! there's this in it,--that it has made you ask me the question, how I manage to keep my family so comfortably, and put money in the Penny Bank, while you, with the same wages, can barely make the ends meet.
Money is independence, and money is made by putting pennies together.
Besides, I work so hard for mine,--and so do you,--that I can't find it in my heart to waste a penny on drink, when I can put it beside a few other hard-earned pennies in the bank. It's something for a sore foot or a rainy day. There's that in it, Jack; and there's comfort also in the thought that, whatever may happen to me, I needn't beg nor go to the workhouse. The saving of the penny makes me feel a free man. The man always in debt, or without a penny beforehand, is little better than a slave.”
”But if we had our rights, the poor would not be so hardly dealt with as they now are.”
”Why, Jack, if you had your rights to-morrow, would they put your money back into your pocket after you had spent it?--would your rights give your children shoes and stockings when you had chosen to waste on beer what would have bought them? Would your rights make you or your wife, thriftier, or your hearthstone cleaner? Would rights wash your children's faces, and mend the holes in your clothes? No, no, friend!
Give us our rights by all means, but _rights are not habits_, and it's habits we want--good habits. With these we can be free men and independent men _now_, if we but determine to be so. Good night, Jack, and mind my secret,--it's nothing but _taking care of the pennies_, and the pounds will take care of themselves.”
”Good-night!” And Jack turned off at the lane-end towards his humble and dirty cottage in Main's Court. I might introduce you to his home,--but ”home” it could scarcely be called. It was full of squalor and untidiness, confusion and dirty children, where a slattern-looking woman was scolding. Ransom's cottage, On the contrary, _was_ a home. It was snug, trig, and neat; the hearthstone was fresh sanded; the wife, though her hands were full of work, was clean and tidy; and her husband, his day's work over, could sit down with his children about him, in peace and comfort.
The _chief secret_ was now revealed. Ransom's secret, about the penny, was a very good one, so far as it went. But he had not really told the whole truth. He could not venture to tell his less fortunate comrade that the root of all domestic prosperity, the mainstay of all domestic comfort, is _the wife_; and Ransom's wife was all that a working man could desire. There can be no thrift, nor economy, nor comfort at home, unless the wife helps;--and a working man's wife, more than any other man's; for she is wife, Housekeeper, nurse, and servant, all in one. If she be thriftless, putting money into her hands is like pouring water through a sieve. Let her be frugal, and she will make her home a place of comfort, and she will also make her husband's life happy,--if she do not lay the foundation of his prosperity and fortune.
One would scarcely expect that for a penny a day it would be possible to obtain anything valuable. And yet it may be easily shown how much a penny a day, carefully expended, might do towards securing a man's independence, and providing his wife and family against the future pressure of poverty and want.
Take up a prospectus and tables of a Provident Society, intended for the use of those cla.s.ses who have a penny a day to spend,--that is, nearly all the working cla.s.ses of the country. It is not necessary to specify any particular society, because the best all proceed upon the same data,--the results of extensive observations and experience of health and sickness;--and their tables of rates, certified by public actuaries, are very nearly the same. Now, looking at the tables of these Life and Sickness a.s.surance Societies, let us see what a penny a day can do.
1. For _a penny a day_, a man or woman of twenty-six years of age may secure the sum of ten s.h.i.+llings a week payable during the time of sickness, for the whole of life.
2. For _a penny a day_ (payments ceasing at sixty years of age), a man or woman of thirty-one years of age may secure the sum of 50 payable at death, whenever that event may happen, even though it should be during the week or the month after the a.s.surance has been effected.
3. For _a penny a day_, a young man or woman of fifteen may secure a sum of 100, the payment of the penny a day continuing during the whole of life, but the 100 being payable whenever death may occur.
4. For _a penny a day_, a young man or woman of twenty may secure an annuity of 26 per annum, or of 10_s_. per week for the whole of life, after reaching the age of sixty-five.
5. For _a penny a day_,--the payment commencing from the birth of any child,--a parent may secure the sum of 20, payable on such child reaching the age of fourteen years.