p. 157 | New England Thrift

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 5, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 10.

New England Thrift.

AND what forethought and economy marked the New England home! Extravagance and running into debt were scarlet sins with the fathers and mothers of old times in New England. Possibly it would not hurt us to practice a little more of the same stern virtues at the present day. It has been urged against the New England home, in this respect of saving, that it made the family penurious and gave an undue bent of avarice to the character. This was, doubtless, the excess of tendency to be guarded against, and that it has given a certain littleness in financial dealings, not always broadening or elevating, must be confessed. But it was a hard task when the family had to bend bone and muscle to scrape a living off the rocks they called soil. The scrapings came hard; and, if they were doled out in driblets, it was no worse than the way in which they came. Yet when Benjamin Franklin was reproached for this hoarding spirit, he replied, “Yes, I save in order that I may have to give.” And after all is said, what more generous givers have been found than among these same “close” New Englanders—whether in missions, philanthropic movements, in famine or pestilence, in devastation by fire or flood, in munificent bequests in private wills? The self-denying, helpful home-spirit cultivated in every household modified excessive frugality and made it a forehanded giver. On the whole, the New England home trained up quite as broad-minded and generous givers as the world has ever seen.—Sel.