Thrift

1895

Thrift is a virtue. No people can long be free who are not thrifty. It is true that thrift sometimes passes beyond virtue, degenerating into the vice of greed. Because there are men who are greedy — drunk with the intoxication of wealth and power — we sometimes are told that wealth and power are criminal. There are some that hold that thrift is folly and personal ownership a crime. In the new Utopia all is to be for all, and no one can claim a monopoly, not even of himself. There may be worlds in which this shall be true. It is not true in the world into which you have been born. Nor can it be. In the world we know the free man should have a reserve of power, and this power is represented by money. If thrift ever ceases to be a virtue, it will be at a time long in the future. Before that time comes our Anglo-Saxon race will have passed away and our civilization will be forgotten. — David Starr Jordan in Popular Science Monthly.

Princess and Countess

1900

The romances of royalty are as tragic as those with which Mr. Anthony Hope has filled the imaginary realm of Ruritania. Princess Stephanie, a daughter of the King of the Belgians, in the bloom of early youth became the wife of Archduke Rudolf, the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary. She seemed destined to be an empress, but her life in Vienna has been overshadowed with unhappiness. The tragic death of the crown prince left her a widow with a young daughter to be educated in the stateliest but most gloomy court in Europe.

The princess at thirty-five has entered upon her second romance. Her marriage to Count Elmer Lonyay involved the sacrifice of her royal rank and complete separation from her daughter, who has reached the age of sixteen. The King of the Belgians and the Emperor of Austria each attempted to dissuade the princess from this second marriage, but she had fallen in love with the Hungarian count, and chose to take her leave of a court where she has never been happy, and to leave behind her daughter, to whom she is devotedly attached.

At the marriage, which took place in March, neither her royal father nor her imperial father-in-law was present. Etiquette forbade them to assist at the ceremony. But the countess has not forfeited their love or their esteem.

The count is of noble, but not of royal, birth. He has estates in Hungary, and is a diplomatist who has been connected with the Austrian embassies at several European courts. Royal etiquette is rigid and without sentiment. The crown princess, who had expected to be an empress, divested herself of royal rank and privilege when she became a countess. She can never again meet on terms of equality her own daughter, who is a great figure at the Austrian court, and is to marry a king's son.

Yet she has exchanged a life which had become a perpetual tragedy for one that promises happiness; and every one who knows her, wishes her happiness in the fullest measure.


Doesn't Go To Waste

Thrift can almost live on what extravagance throws away. The dust from blast furnaces is apparently worthless material, but in France successful experiments have been made with it for fertilizing purposes. The land responded satisfactorily. The dust contains ingredients which the earth finds to be stimulating. After all, there is little on this world of ours that is without value.

— Youth's Companion.

Money Spending a Habit

1908

Spending money is a good deal of a habit, and though nobody need expect to break it off entirely, it can be restricted with much less serious inconvenience than most of us suppose.

It is by no means the only way to have fun. The problems of economy are just about as interesting as the problems of expenditure. It is sometimes so harassing to decide in which of several ways to spend a sum of money that it comes almost as a relief to have the money crawl back into its hole and make a decision unnecessary.

Thrift has great powers of entertainment, especially when it is successful, and relieves the mind of fiscal anxieties without depriving the body of the food, raiment and shelter that are necessary to health. — Harper's Weekly.


What She Said

"What did your wife say when you told her that you had lost your money in stocks?"
"What a foolish question. She said what every other woman would say under similar circumstances: 'Isn't that just like a man?' " — Detroit Free Press.


The Ideal

The ideal man, as woman considers him, is one who can trail around for half a day and not get weary while she stops to price things.

Prisoners Eager to Work in Dump; Clean-up Day Yesterday

Ohio, 1921

Prisoners Work Unguarded in City Dump to Collect Saleable Articles

ELYRIA - Police officers were dumbfounded when they returned to the city dump Thursday night and found August Deshberger, Robert Doyal, Frank Crofton and Fred Lewis still on the job and industriously working. The men arrested and fined $5 each on vagrancy charges had been on the city dump all day unguarded and insisted on returning to work on the dump today. The request was granted by the police.

Police found the cause of the men being anxious to work on the city dump when they discovered that the quartet had been picking out brass, copper, lead, zinc and other salable articles which the men have pooled and from which they expect to realize several dollars from the sale to a junk dealer.

The quartet have also many articles of clothing found which they have appropriated. They claim they struck it lucky by being put to work on the city dump by the police at this time when the annual clean-up is in progress and the sorting out of salable articles made much easier.

The annual spring clean-up will not be completed this week but will require a couple of days next week, said Street Commissioner John Conabee who says 38 loads of rubbish have been hauled to the dump so far. The clean-up wagons have had some difficulty in getting through unimproved streets following the rains earlier in the week. The placing of the rubbish on the curb facilitates the handling, said Mr. Conabee.

—The Chronicle Telegram, Elyria, Ohio, April 22, 1921, page 1.