Shoddy apparel never is anything else but shoddy, and well might it proclaim the shoddy man.
When we throw away our opportunity to present a genteel appearance, just for the sake of the bank roll, we doom ourselves to defeat in the pursuit of knowledge.

We cannot get all we want to know by the mere reading of books.

We must mingle with people; we must interchange thought that we may crystallize what we know into practical knowledge so it can be made into tools to work with.

While a man of brains is welcome everywhere the matter of his appearance has a lot to do with how he is received and with whom he may fraternize.
"Isn't it a pity," we hear people say, "that, with all his brains, he hasn't sense enough to make himself presentable ?" But the worst phase of the situation is that the unkempt man sooner or later loses faith in himself and either ceases to hoard at the expense of his gentility or he gives up his opportunity to mingle with others and lapses into habits consistent with miserly thoughts.
The phrase "_a happy medium_" is well known and decidedly applicable to the subject of saving as we go along so that we may avert the sorrows which follow in the wake of _living beyond our means_.

It suggests a desirable middle course which permits us to adopt a sane policy, rather than flying to an extreme.
It cannot be said that we are living beyond our means when by reason of our association with men of affairs we need to spend more money and thereby save less in preparing ourselves for the larger opportunities which will naturally follow.