Thrift

“ From such firesides go forth those inheriting the right spirit,—loving industry, loving thrift, and loving home. Emulous of a good example, they in their day and generation would nobly endeavour to lay by a portion of their income. ”

“ That they swell yearly now, if such be the fact, indicates that what thrift exists does gradually resort more and more thither rather than elsewhither; but the question, Is thrift increasing? runs through the reticulation, and is as water spilt on the ground, not to be gathered here. ”

“ In short, thrift negates thrift. If every worker in England should heed the preachers of thrift and cut expenditure in half, the condition of there being more men to work than there is work to do would swiftly cut wages in half. And then none of the workers of England would be thrifty, for they would be living up to their diminished incomes. ”

“ Nor e'en the gift of your whole self could save
This wand'rer, shipwrecked on the sea of life;
Who, passing by your door, says only this—
"You are no richer, dear, for that day's thrift,
While I am made the poorer for all time." ”

“ All England is ringing with the praise of thrift. Not Scotland, for a Scotchman is born thrifty—just as he is said to be born not able to understand a joke. And as to Irishmen, it is to be questioned whether they have such a word in their dictionary at all. No class of mutual thrift institution has flourished there, says the latest writer on the subject, Rev. Francis Wilkinson; and mostly our earlier thrift societies were started by a landlord for his own benefit, rather than for that of the members. ”

“ But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in wishing for some thrift in the energy which produces it. Labour misapplied, you will agree, is labour wasted; and as dress, I presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain case of waste. ”

“ Give the American woman lessons in thrift along the modern lines of income 15 and expenditure, and she will work out her splendid salvation. Throw light on food values, on fabrics and their adulteration. Teach the woman how to buy as well as how to utilize what she buys, and she will be able to solve, in her own way, the much discussed problem of the high cost of living. ”

“ And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion. ”

“ It is by individual thrift that society accumulates, and it is wise to encourage thrift.
If I build a mill and, falling sick, cannot use it, it is fair that he who does use it shall pay me for my sacrifice in building it. ”

“ Thrift, moreover, is the badge of every proper-minded husbandman, and it is according to the thriftiness of his husbandry that Nature rewards his labours. “But Nature,” I hear some caviller exclaim, “Nature is herself the most reckless of spend-thrifts. ”

“ Indeed, there is a general appearance of thrift. It is in populous centres, in large cities, that real want and hunger are mostly suffered, where from force of circumstances the multitude of people cease to be producers, but are still consumers. ”

“ Young ladies whose thrift equalled their ingenuity made their own varnish by boiling isinglass in a quart of brandy,—a lamentable waste of supplies.
Genteel parcels were always wrapped in silver paper. We remember how Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond tries in vain to make one sheet cover the famous “filigree basket,” which was her birthday present to her Cousin Bell, and which pointed its own moral by falling to pieces before it was presented. Rosamond’s father derides this basket because he is implored not to grasp it by its myrtle-wreathed handle. ”

“ No one knew better than they the difficulties of the task before them. In England, as in America, thrift is more regarded as a vice than a virtue. Like the taste for olives it [Pg 123] is an acquired thing. ”

“ Nay, do not think I flatter; For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. ”

“ Wherever you follow it up, you will find the modern thrift not quite successful in the cottages. It is not elastic enough; or, rather, the people's means are not elastic enough, and will not stretch to its demands. ”

“ All their members began preaching and practicing the gospel of thrift and asking men, women and children to save in every possible way and invest the results of their small savings and economies in thrift stamps costing twenty-five cents each. ”

“ I had been taught to admire thrift, but here I found it held to be the meanest of qualities. The Beau Ideal of a Bohemian I discovered to be the young man who is free with his purse and careless of his obligations. ”

“ Let wealth come in by comely thrift
And not by any sordid shift;
'Tis haste
Makes waste:
Extremes have still their fault:
[Pg 23] The softest fire makes the sweetest malt:
Who grips too hard the dry and slippery sand
Holds none at all, or little in his hand. ”

“ He led the way, the spendthrift following, to a little room all of bare stone, and in which were only three things—the magic carpet, the iron candlestick, and the earthen jar. This last the old man gave to the foolish spendthrift. “My friend,” said he, “when you chose the money and jewels that day in the cavern, you chose the less for the greater. Here is a treasure that an emperor might well envy you. Whatever you wish for you will find by dipping your hand into the jar. ”

“ Waste in the kitchen; Personal standards of thrift; Thriftlessness among the poor. There is an index and five symbolic cartoons by Rollin Kirby.
Booklist 17:7 O ’20 “Certainly, the gospel of thrift which Mr Straus expounds needs to be spread far and wide. The little talks on thrift contained in part II will be helpful to teachers as illustrations of the thrift idea.” G: F. Zook
+ Survey 44:310 My 29 ’20 330w The Times [London] Lit Sup p385 Je 17 ’20 100w STRAYER, GEORGE DRAYTON, and ENGELHARDT, NICKOLAUS LOUIS. Classroom teacher at work in American school. ”

“ He stucke them vp before the fulsome Ewes,
Who then conceauing, did in eaning time
Fall party-colour'd lambs, and those were Iacobs.
This was a way to thriue, and he was blest:
And thrift is blessing if men steale it not. ”

“ The text is written by Mr Edward L. Robinson, vice-president of a savings bank in Baltimore, and the bibliography prepared by Marian A. Glenn, librarian of the American bankers’ association [and Ina Clement] . ... The topics covered by the bibliography are as follows: Thrift and savings; Individual thrift; Domestic thrift; Evidences of thriftlessness; Economics of thrift; Industrial thrift; Business thrift; Banking thrift; National thrift; International thrift; Thrift agencies ”

“ There are but two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it out. ”

“ Claire and Mrs. Larry accepted the printed announcements mechanically, their gaze fixed on the tea room, which was already half full. On the platform, bustling employees of the store were arranging what looked like an exhibit, bolts of cloth and silk, ready-made garments, shoes, gloves, linens, perfumes. The saleswoman followed their curious glance.
“Those are the heads of departments and the buyers. They are going to answer questions after the lecture.” ”

“ We are still trying to economize by concocting dishes out of left-overs in the refrigerator, and turning and dyeing clothes, when it is far more important that we should know the true value of food and fabrics when we buy them.
“A few generations back, your ancestors and mine, both husbands and wives, raised together in the field, the pasture and the garden, most of the foodstuffs required for the family. And in the great kitchen were woven most of the fabrics required for clothing the family. What could not be raised on the land or made in the home was traded for at the country store. ”

“ You can’t expect the workers in a great factory to take the same individual pains that your dressmaker or seamstress would take. It costs money to renew trifles like these which drop from a ready-made garment. Sometimes you can not match them at all and your dress is spoiled. ”

“ To spendthrifts money is so living and actual—it is such a thin veil between them and their pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune—that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. ”

“ The cloth of gold and silver, the fine satins and velvets, the embroidery, more exquisite than anything we have time or patience for now—embroidery of gold thread which we hear of, an uncomfortable sort of luxury, even upon the linen of great personages—would there be put forth and inspected by gallants in all their fine array, or by the ladies in their veils, half or wholly muffled from public inspection. ”

“ So they went into the storehouse where were kept beautiful treasures which human beings love. From the collection they chose what they thought would please most their good friend, such as gold, jade, brocade, cups and saucers, rice, horses to ride on, oxen to bear heavy loads and pretty maids to wait on him, besides silk and cotton clothes of all sorts, with delicious things to eat and drink. By some magic process, they packed these into a seed and then gave it to the sparrow in its bill to carry to the good man. ”

“ There is a whole street devoted to the sale of coffins; several in which nothing is sold but furniture, from common folding tables up to the costliest settees, bedsteads, and chairs of massive ebony carving; chinaware streets, book and engraving streets, streets of silk shops, streets of workers in brass, silver, and gold, who perform their delicate manipulations before your eyes; streets of second-hand clothing, where gorgeous embroideries in silk and gold can be bought for almost nothing ”

“ The enrichment may, however, rightly be, and oftenest is, perhaps, in a material nobler than the stuff enriched, in silk upon linen, in wool upon cotton, in gold upon velvet. The advisability of working upon a precious stuff in thread less precious is open to question. It does not seem to have been satisfactorily done; but if it were only the background that was worked, and the pattern were so schemed as almost to cover it, so that, in fact, very little of the more beautiful texture was sacrificed, and you had still a sumptuous pattern on a less attractive background—why not? ”

“ There was rich furniture, carpets of softest velvet covered the floors, mirrors and paintings filled the walls; there were exquisite vases of delicate tints and graceful forms, finest statuary, innumerable and endless articles of ornamentation, and, lying about in rich profusion, were costly silks and glittering satins and rare laces; jewellery flashed out here and there; diamonds and pearls and all precious gems in beautiful settings, novels in costly binding, food delicate and tempting in abundance and variety. ”

“ Many never see more than a part of the sales possibilities of what we have to sell. Our merchandise is as common to us as an old shoe. We are prone to forget that its forms are the result of age-long processes of development, its ornament the heritage from an immemorial past. Often we forget its romance, its quickening appeal to the imagination, its promise as a way to richer and more stimulating life. To us a chair is a chair, and a rug is just another rug. ”

“ You should see the servant-girl, with her greasy flounces, and soiled artificial flowers. You should see young men, with staring diamond pins stuck on their coarse shirt-bosoms, with shabby velvet vests, and mock chains looped over them.
You should go into the “furnishing stores for ladies’ and children’s garments;” and see how impossible it is to find plain, substantial articles of clothing for either—two thirds, at least, of the cost of every article being for elaborate trimming, and ruffling, and useless embroidery. ”

“ Something is there which belongs alike to the shop of the dealer in old iron, the warehouse of the merchant, the laboratory of the chemist, and the studio of the painter: in all these mysterious recesses, where but a discreet half-light filters through the shutters, the most obviously antique thing is the dust: the cobwebs are more genuine than the laces, and the old pear-tree furniture is more modern than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from America. ”

“ As I travel on I am continually hearing of art treasures, of ancient furniture, of fine oak panelling, ruthlessly removed from old houses, of old family pictures and portraits, old pewter, old fireplaces, old everything, having been purchased by Americans, millionaire or otherwise, and conveyed across the Atlantic; how far true I cannot say, but I have also heard that there are sundry manufactories abroad and at home of sham antiques, of old masters, old pottery, "Toby Jugs" in particular, and furniture, kept busily employed for the benefit chiefly of Americans. ”

“ We are taking out of our houses, those of us who can, the pieces of furniture that ought not to have been made, putting into their places old-time things of beauty, or, when it is not possible for us to acquire veritable antique pieces, the high-grade reproductions of old furniture that now grace the market and show no abatement in popular esteem. ”