cannot put money in the bank, and that he must bind himself and his family
to slavery, for the sake of owning a bit of property which they will
probably wish to sell before they have it paid for, is disgraceful.
Intelligent men should see that here is the profit in the transaction;
that enough go to the wall to pay for the trouble of the rest, just as in
life insurance enough die before the expected time to put money in the
pockets of the riskers.

A drunken father may need to be held, but the young professor, the lawyer,
the engineer, should have sufficient self-respect and firmness to save
that which in his judgment is necessary, without being tied by "the
instalment plan." This method is a very viper in the finances of to-day.
The wise business man never ventures more than he can afford to lose in a
risk, but the man who takes bread and milk from his children to invest in
"a sure thing" takes a risk with what is not his to give.

To buy land for investment is another supposed virtue, an inheritance from
the time when slow growth, once started in a given direction, kept on, so
that great acumen was not needed to buy; but that is all changed to-day.
Only those "in the ring" can tell where the "boom" will go next.

In these days of unparalelled rapidity of change in industrial and social
conditions it is most undesirable for a man to be hampered by a shell
which is too large to carry about with him and too valuable to be left
behind. To each reader will occur instances of the refusal of an
advantageous offer because the family home could not be realized upon at
once, the location once so favorable had become undesirable, and the
values put into it could not be recovered because of social conditions
following industrial changes.