THE ART OF SPENDING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15646, 27 June 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ART OF SPENDING.

BT FBAMK MOaTON.

"The great man that is viciovi will be greatly vicious, and the rich miser is only a covetous beggar; for, not ho who possesses, but he that spe and enjoys his wea'ih, iB tho :«.u and the nappy man; nor he who barely spends, but he who does it with discretion. . . ."

Have you noticed how few people on oarth nowadays nre skilled in the great art of spending money? If I were put to it I could scarcely name you a dozen offhand. I know lots of people who waste money recklessly, sorao who recklessly waste lots of money that is not their own ; but the man who spends his own substance wisely—how rare and how precious a fellow he is !

The true wealth of a man consists not in what he earns or what he has, but in what he spends wisely. Money is at best only a means to an end. If I had twenty thousand pounds to-day I Bhould be secure of all that twenty thousand millions could bring me. There are only a few thousand days in a man's lifetime, and tho number of each day's needs is limited. A man has only ono heart, one brain, ono stomach, one conscience, or corpso of a conscience. So that for one man's honest satisfactoin little wealth is needed, and if men generally could but spend well little wealth would they seek. It is because so many poor souls have lost the art of spending that they are driven to seek strange excitements and perversions of pleasure—some give themselves to vain display, miserliness, evilspeaking, or other of the hideous vices, some suffocate their souls in troughs tho hogs have turned from, and some fling tooth and nail into one or other of the parasitic professions, and so live already in hell. The man who writes, tho man who sings, the man who struts a stage for his living—these aro all happy in one great respect; ~thoy need sell their souls to no man and they can keep their hearts their own. It's a queer .thing for a sane man to confess, but I become gratefuller every day that the gods have permitted ,me to be a journalist ! I have never in my life been compelled by professional necessity to write a word I did not steadfastly believe.

But there wo are, you see; wo do wander so. I set out to talk about the true art and joy of spending money, and straightway your guessed objections drag mo into a sort of meek apology for the profession of journalism. Pray let me stick to my subject.

| Monoy, I was about to say', is of no good at all to the man who docs not I know how to spend it. I meet people j every little while who have been to I Europe, and stayed in expensive hotels, and had tho freedom of historic places— and they have brought back nothing) nothing (that is to say), but enlarged livers and a more jaundiced view of tho world. I have been into the houses of moneyed people, and found there nothing that I would care to carry away. I know men with thousands a year of incomo, and not a hundred books to their name. What uso.is money to a man if he remains a stranger to all the world of beauty and .delight? Why should a man crawl in tho kennels, defiling his soul and his body, for money that ho cannot spend with profit? Why? Well, why is the world eo blind about everything? I find that the averago man with littlo money wastes the small remnant that is not eaten by his actual daily needs. Money spent on anything that confers no 'permanent benefit or pleasure is money flung away. _ If you give a crown to a man in genuine need (particularly if you ask no impudent questions, and say nothing about it afterwards), you do your duty—which, after all, is the only goodness possible to a man; and the mere fact of duty done builds up the soul. So that tho host means of spending money is to follow a decent impulse and give it away to someone else. Let me be horribly unbusinesslike and uncommercial, and confess that in the Christian sense there is no justification for the private ownership of money. Gold is of tho stuff of the earth, as much a common possession and right of humanity as the air wo brcatho and the water of the rolling ocean all around us. You— you dare the wild that I also am a Christian—you may twit me with being a bad individualist. My dear old lady, I am an individualist as the world is; but at this moment we are talking rather of tho world as it might be. In a battle which is none of my making I will fight with Brown and Jones and Robinson for a foothold—becauso I must, if for no other reason; but I will not pretond to like doing it. But I am honest enough to admit that I haven't, because I happen to write for a living, any right to a larger share of the sweets of the earth and the moment than go to Hodge, who works horribly hard for a pittanco, and wears his body out in forty years. Before a man can begin to spend money well ho must realise who he is and where he stands. It makes ft man modest to think of that, hero as ho stands on a point between tho two eternities, all tho dead ages behind him, and God alone knows what ahead.

So we start fair. Wo havo a little money that wo can spend on our pleasures. We've had the luck to get it, and wo want to spend it well. We may risk it on a woman, or wo may risk it on a horse. Wo may get drunk on it, or we may buy a robe of tinsel with it, and go out as priest of a new religion. Wo may use it to poison the night withal, as we take half a dozen bottles and half a dozen doxies out in a motor-car; I am told that that queer way of spending money becomes quite popular in somo very moral parishes— tho night keeps her counsel so well, though maybe the angels see. Thero are a million, ways in which wo can spend our money to tho assured damnation of our souls. Be free with your coin, and it is wonderfully easy to prostitute your manhood ; the false Bohemia is full of loud dens and stinking sirens and the suckers of bloc! are sleepless in tho path of fools. How shall tho man of good intent spend hij money ? Who shall teach him how to spend it? There lies the difficulty. Tho art is not taught in our schools. Even the moralists of this materialist day don't teach a man how to spend money, boing too busy telling him how to save it. To eavo money may just as wisely hoard up coals in a bucket. Wo hear frugality extolled as a virtue, as if there is somo rare salvation in living meanly. This hoarding up of money, so that it may foster in corruption and breed in misery—it is the grossest vice of this civilisation. The value of money lies simply and solely in the fact that it helps a man to get what ho wants, and the things most worth getting can bo got for very little. What does an intelligent young man want, when all is said? A good book, as each good book is read and reverently laid away; a comfortable room and decent food ; adequate simple, sensible clothing; and occasional shillings for a good theatre ; an odd half-crown for any fellow who may happen to need its and when tho time comes a little money for the innocent pleasures of the girl he wants to kiss. All things else aro luxuries, and luxuries always lead to nausea in the end. Books are, I*insist, the great thing; for the man who onco becomes a friend of books has all the world and all tho ages for his grand estate. And hero's a hint. Get the European second-hand book cata—nothing easier; and every week send the cash for one book. Anything from two to five shillings it will cost you, and every week will bring you new delight. In Europo there aro a thousand curious, bookshops, all eager for your custom. I know, becauso I nave been a customer for twenty years and more. Every man can afford one book a week, just as ,any man can afford his daily pinVor two .of beer. If you can't afford both, cut ihe bow,;