WHAT IT COSTS by Richard Newton

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 8, 1881

WHAT IT COSTS.

By Richard Newton

A GENTLEMAN was walking in Regent's Park in London, and he met a man whose only home was in the poor-house. He had come out to take the air and excited the gentleman's interested attention.

"Well, my friend," said the gentleman, getting into conversation, "it is a pity that a man like you should be situated just as you are. Now may I ask how old you are?"

The man said he was eighty years of age.

"Had you any trade before you became penniless?"

"Yes, I was a carpenter."

"Did you use intoxicating drink ?"

"No, oh no, ; I only took my beer; never anything stronger; nothing but my beer."

"How much did your beer come to a day?"

"Oh, a sixpence a day, I suppose."

"For how long a time?"

"Well, I suppose for about sixty years."

The gentleman had taken out his note-book, and he continued figuring with his pencil while he went on talking with the man.

"Now, let me tell you," said he as he finished his calculations, "how much that beer cost you, my man. You can go over the figures." And the gentleman demonstrated that the money, a sixpence a day for sixty years, expended in beer, would, if it had been saved and placed at interest, have yielded him nearly eight hundred dollars a year, or an income of fifteen dollars a week for self-support.

"Let me tell you now how much one gallon of whisky costs," said a judge, after trying a case. "One gallon of whisky made two men murderers; it made two wives widows; and it made eight children orphans."

Oh, it's a costly thing.—Rev. Richard Newton.