Year: 1871

1


Can you afford to work hard all day,
and read, study, or court the vagaries
of society nearly all night, thus wasting
your vitality, exhausting your nervous
system, and bringing on premature dis
ease, decay, and old age?


Can you afford to read fine print with
a poor light in rail car, where the mo.
ton disturbs the proper focus of vision,
thus weakening your eyes so as nearly to
deprive you of the power to use them
either in reading or in the daily duties
of life? Even though you do not have
an oculist to pay, you may be obliged to
wear glasses ten or fifteen years sooner
than you otherwise would; can you af-
ford thus to spoil your eyes to save lit
tie time?


Can you afford to eat hastily, and then
rush to study or business, Withdrawing
the nervous energy from the digestive
system of the brain and muscles, and
thus inducing dyspepsia, in few years
at most, to scourge and haunt and make
you miserable for years, or for life


Can you afford to live on rich and
highly seasoned food, eat champaign sup
pers, because an artificial appetite is thus
gratifed, rendering gout, dyspepsia, or
apoplexv in the middle of life almost a
certainty?


Can you afford to commit suicide
through the indulgence of appetite and
passion, adopting the FOOLS motto, "a
short life and merry one p


Can you afford to keep your brain
boiling hot in reading sensational novels,
thus unbalancing and rendering morbid
your mental and physical constitution


Can you afford to indulge in fast liv-
ing, dressing beyond your means, driving
livery horses, or keeping horse your
self, when your income is not adequate
to such expenses?


Can you afford to smoke and chew
tobacco, thus spending from FIVE to fifty
dollars month, and injuring your nerv-
Gus system, and perverting your whole
constitution, and thereby transmitting to
children weakened constitution, thus
making them puny invalids for life
Can you afford to burn out your nerv-
Gus system and demoralize your whole
character by the use of alcoholic liquors? !?
/ Can you afford to indulge in habits of
speculation, gambling, and other tricky
and mean modes of making money?
Can you afford to make money at the
expense of your manhood, your morals,
your health, your just respectability,
and your integrity2


Can you afford to gain even the whole
/ world and thereby make of yourself a


moral wreck?


Can you afford, for the sake of mo-
J mentary amusement, to waste your
! youthful preparatory years, when by
, study you could become a scholar, or


by industry either tradesman or use
: full artisan?


Can you afford to rob your mind to
clothe your back with silks and satins,
!; and crafty mere love for display?


Can you afford to be tricky and there
by defraud your employer of the just
J services you owe him, even though you
do get your pay, thus making yourself a
: moral bankrupt?


Can you afford to be otherwise than
J upright, truthful, faithful, temperate,
courteous, and in all respects correct2
Pupils in school sometimes fancy they


are doing smart thing by deceiving the
, teacher, that they may play instead Of
study. Apprentices often neglect their
duty for fun and amusement, and fail
to learn their trade, which is life-lon G
damage to them. Many people do wrong
knowingly, and thus mar their moral
nature and make themselves feel mean,
unworthy, and despicable; and, because
the world don't know it, they think they
have done themselves no harm; but they
carry the moral scar of wrong-doing
through life. Can you afford to have


any motto adverse to the old adage, that


Honesty is the best policy p
Reader, stop and consider whether
what you are doing, or what you pro-
pose to do, will pay; whether you can
afford to do it. Time is money!" do
not throw it away, but make every day
and every hour tell either for your
growth, health, or profit.


Congressman are gathering from near