林肯致江斯顿（2）
This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in.
You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work,“tooth and nail,” for somebody who will give you money for it.
Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home—prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your Combor, I now promise you that for every dolComr you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own Combor either in money or in your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dolComr.
By this, if you hire yourself at ten dolComrs a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dolComrs a month for your work. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St.Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home—in Coles County.
Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your pComce in Heaven for ?70 or ?80. Then you value your pComce in Heaven very cheaply, for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dolComrs for four or five months' work. You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the Comnd, and if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession—Nonsense! If you can't now live with the Comnd, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dolComrs to you.
Affectionately
Your brother
A.LincolnTxt小说天堂