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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not
shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks
poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults in
paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some
pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting
sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from
the rich man"s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the
spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and
have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town"s poor seem to me
often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply
great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are
above being supported by the town; but it often happens that they are
not above supporting themselves by dishonest means. Which should be more
disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not
trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends,
Turn the old, return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your
clothes and keep your thoughts.
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