Independence by Rudyard Kipling

At first sight it may seem superfluous to speak of thrift and / independence to men of your race, and in a University that produced / Duncan of Ruthwell and Chalmers. I admit it. No man carries coals to / Newcastle -- to sell; but if he wishes to discuss coal in the abstract, / as the Deacon of Dumfries discussed love, he will find Newcastle knows / something about it. And so, too, with you here. May I take it that you, / for the most part, come, as I did, from households conversant with / a certain strictness -- let us call it a decent and wary economy -- in / domestic matters, which has taught us to look at both sides of the / family shilling; that we belong to stock where present sacrifice for / future ends (our own education may have been among them) was accepted, / in principle and practice, as part of life? I ask this, because talking / to people who for any cause have been denied these experiences is like / trying to tell a neutral of our life between 1914 and 1918.

Independence means, "Let every herring hang by its own head. " It / signifies the blessed state of hanging on to as few persons and things / as possible; and it leads up to the singular privilege of a man owning / himself.