Aunt Sophronia's Advice on Getting Rich

One of my domestic treasures is an old book formerly belonging to my great-grandmother. It is titled The Complete Home, An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs Embracing All the Interests of The Household, by Julia McNair Wright. Mrs. Wright wrote to help impoverished families economize during the depression of the 1870's. She writes in the first person in the character of a delightful old biddy named Aunt Sophronia. Aunt Sophronia has three nieces of her own whom she is guiding, and she is aunt by courtesy title to most of the young people in town.

In this excerpt Aunt Sophronia has been invited to a tea her niece is hosting for a newly married lady in town when:

"The conversation happened to turn on this question of building up domestic finances; and some of the young women said to me, "Aunt Sophronia, what are the rules for getting rich?"

"Come," I said, "do you suppose the answer to that question will be short or long, hard or easy?"

Said Helen, "I should think it would be very long, as there are millions of ways of getting rich, and people have been busy for several thousand years in discussing them. It must be a very hard question to answer, also, inasmuch as most people find it so very hard to get rich."

"All that has been said can be boiled to a very short and simple answer, " I replied; "and all the difficulty in the work lies in the needful self-sacrifice. The question first is, What do you mean by getting rich? ...Will you be content to call honest independence, enough to live upon tastefully without fear or favor, enough to keep away the wolves of debt and want, and to send out from your door, on your errands, the full-handed angels of benevolence, will you call that being rich?"

"...I will give you the rules, which are few and simple, and easily performed by self-sacrifice. Work hard; see and improve all small opportunities; keep out of debt and carefully economize. That is the best that all the wisdom of the world has been able to digest and formulate as rules for getting rich. The matter is simple and lies in a nutshell: have the end definitely before you; do your own work toward it and do it honestly, and don't give up until you have reached your goal; the same plain, straight, unadorned and yet passable road is open to all."

Pages 391-392