INCONSISTENT EXPECTATIONS.

This world may be considered as a great mart of commerce, where fortune
exposes to our view various commodities,--riches, ease, tranquillity, fame,
integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price,--our time,
our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money, which we are to lay out
to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your
own judgment, and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing,
repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase.

Such is the force of well-regulated industry that a steady and vigorous
exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure
success. Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you think that single point
worth the sacrifice of everything else? You may then be rich. Thousands
have become so, from the lowest beginnings, by toil, and patient diligence,
and attention to the minutest articles of expense and profit. But you must
give up the pleasures of leisure, of mental ease, of a free, unsuspicious
temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar
honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you
from the schools, must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser
alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard,
lf not unjust things; and as for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and
ingenuous spirit, it is necessary to get rid of them as fast as possible.
You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your
understanding with plain household truths. In short, you must not attempt
to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments, but
must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right
or to the left. "But you say, I cannot submit to drudgery like this; I feel
a spirit above it." 'Tis well, be above it then; only do not repine that