Boys | Page 6

be furious if anyone spoke to or of them as you sometimes hear women spoken of. What would be an insult to them is an insult to any woman. Stand up for the honour and respect due to others as you would for your own mother or sister. You would not talk like that before your mother. Make it a rule never to do or say anything that you would be ashamed to say in her presence, or in the presence of anyone you respect. Courage is what you want here and plenty of it, but if you will only make a stand for the right, strength, not your own, will be given you. I can tell you of one who did so try and do the same. Bishop Pattison, who died some years ago, when he was fearlessly doing his duty in the islands of the Pacific, was, once a boy, face to face with this difficulty. He was in the cricket eleven of his school--a good player and very fond of the game. It had become the custom at cricket suppers for bad talk to be indulged in. Pattison one evening rose up at the table and said, "If this conversation is to be allowed I must leave the eleven. I cannot share in this conversation--if you determine to continue it I shall have no choice but to go." They did not want to lose him, and the foul conversation was stopped.

MONEY.
The love of money is the root of all evil. Nevertheless, money in a civilized country is a necessity. How to make it is one of the great questions, and how to spend it aright is one of the great difficulties.
Money is power. It is power, if we use it aright, it overpowers us if we use it badly or even carelessly. It is a great mistake to want to make your money too quickly, and a still greater mistake to think that you are likely to do so. Money that is the result of honest labour will, if rightly used, be a blessing to you and yours.
1st. How to make it. By honest labour, honestly done. You have chosen your trade or occupation--let your money be honestly earned therein, and look more to the quality of your work than to the quantity of your money. You have a right when you have learnt your trade to a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, but be sure that the word fair governs both the work and the wage--the fair work must be done before the fair wage can be rightly claimed. There is far too much scamping work in the present day, working simply for money and not for any interest in the work itself. Money should not be a man's test of success, but the perfectness of his work. Men used once to work for love of their art, and so long as the picture was painted or the sculpture wrought, they cared little for the money they were to gain by it, or the hardship of their lives, but now men paint for what the public will pay for, and write and work not from their hearts but for their pockets. And with high and low, not success but money is the moving power--not how can I can make it more perfect, but what can I get for it. A man who will leave a piece of work, or a clerk who will leave a few minutes writing only because the clock has struck the hour, is little better than a money-making machine. Work done in such a spirit did not give us men like Wren or Stephenson. Read their lives and you will see what I mean. If your work is thoroughly and honestly done, you have a right to your own price for it, if you can find a purchaser. You have a right to sell your labour at your own price, but the master has an equal right to buy or to refuse. Combinations and unions of working men are perfectly right, if they unite for their own advantage, and for protection against oppression, and strikes may, though in very rare cases, be a painful necessity. It must be borne in mind that there can be no fixed standard of wages. Wages must vary with the state of the markets. Men must be ready to accept lower wages when trade is dull, they must bear their share of the depression as well as the masters, and the true principle is for men and masters, or if you like the expression better, capital and labour to go hand in hand. The success or ruin of the one is the success or ruin of the other. There are of course cases of