As summer is the season of the year in which the industrious and
laborious husbandman gathers and lays up such fruits as may supply his
necessities in winter, so youth and manhood are the times of life which
we should employ and bestow in laying in such a stock of all kind of
necessaries as may suffice for the craving demands of helpless old age.
Yet, notwithstanding the truth of this, there are many of those which we
call rational creatures, who live in a method quite opposite to it, and
make it their business to squander away, in a profuse prodigality,
whatever they get in their younger days: as if the infirmity of age
would require no supplies to support it; or, at least, would find them
administered to in some miraculous way. From this fable we learn this
admirable lesson, never to lose any present opportunity of providing
against the future evils and accidents of life. While health and the
flower and vigour of our age remain firm and entire, let us lay them out
to the best advantage, that, when the latter days take hold of us, and
spoil us of our strength and abilities, we may have a store moderately
sufficient to subsist upon, which we laid up in the morning of our age.