[63] Miss Edgeworth says that proverbs are vulgar because they are
common sense.

[64] Emerson.




LETTER VII.

ECONOMY.


Perhaps there is no lesson that needs to be more watchfully and
continually impressed on the young and generous heart than the difficult
one of economy. There is no virtue that in such natures requires more
vigilant self-control and self-denial, besides the exercise of a free
judgment, uninfluenced by the excitement of feeling.

To you this virtue will be doubly difficult, because you have so long
watched its unpleasant manifestations in a distorted form. You are
exposed to danger from that which has perverted many notions of right
and wrong; you have so long heard things called by false names that you
are inclined to turn away in disgust from a noble reality. You have been
accustomed to hear the name of economy given to penuriousness and
meanness, so that now, the wounded feelings and the refined tastes of
your nature having been excited to disgust by this system of falsehood,
you will find it difficult to realize in economy a virtue that joins to
all the noble instincts of generosity the additional features of