On Work and Business

Worth having is worth working for.

Work that brings honest accumulation is honorable.

We should all work while we live and make a diligent use of life while any power remains. How distressing it is to see in an age of progress, and in a land that yields so readily to the hand of the industrious, so much poverty, distress, and want. Even the ant, "which hath no guide, overseer or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest."

A great many of the troubles and wants of life arise from a careless discharge of your duties, and an aversion to work, also a lack of energy and forethought, and a wasteful expenditure of money. It is indeed bad for a man, who has a large family, to be poor and not understand the value of time and money.

One of the first things that drew my attention to Charleston, as a business place, was the late hours at which merchants began their day's work. I concluded that if they could make a living beginning the day at 9 o'clock, I could make more than a living by starting some hours earlier.

As important as a collegiate education may be to young men, and I hereby admit the importance of parents bestowing the best possible education upon their children, yet it may not be a misfortune in the present condition of the country, that the counting house should be their college, for there they are taught the useful, if not the ornamental branches of education.

In this school of toil and industry, they learn a knowledge of the world, the value of time, money and character. G. W. W.

Nacoochee Valley, August, 1878.