University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.
ECONOMY.

“THE fact is,” said Jenny, as she twirled a little
hat on her hand, which she had been making
over, with nobody knows what of bows and pompons,
and other matters for which the women have curious
names, — “the fact is, American women and girls
must learn to economize; it is n't merely restricting
one's self to American goods, it is general economy,
that is required. Now here 's this hat, — costs me
only three dollars, all told; and Sophie Page bought
an English one this morning at Madame Meyer's for
which she gave fifteen. And I really don't think hers
has more of an air than mine. I made this over, you
see, with things I had in the house, bought nothing
but the ribbon, and paid for altering and pressing,
and there you see what a stylish hat I have!”

“Lovely! admirable!” said Miss Featherstone.
“Upon my word, Jenny, you ought to marry a poor
parson; you would be quite thrown away upon a rich
man.”

“Let me see,” said I. “I want to admire intelligently.

That is n't the hat you were wearing yesterday?”

“O no, papa! This is just done. The one I wore
yesterday was my waterfall-hat, with the green feather;
this, you see, is an oriole.”

“A what?”

“An oriole. Papa, how can you expect to learn
about these things?”

“And that plain little black one, with the stiff crop
of scarlet feathers sticking straight up?”

“That 's my jockey, papa, with a plume en militaire.”

“And did the waterfall and the jockey cost anything?”

“They were very, very cheap, papa, all things
considered. Miss Featherstone will remember that
the waterfall was a great bargain, and I had the feather
from last year; and as to the jockey, that was made
out of my last year's white one, dyed over. You know,
papa, I always take care of my things, and they last
from year to year.”

“I do assure you, Mr. Crowfield,” said Miss Featherstone,
“I never saw such little economists as your
daughters; it is perfectly wonderful what they contrive
to dress on. How they manage to do it I 'm sure I
can't see. I never could, I 'm convinced.”

“Yes,” said Jenny, “I' ve bought but just one new

hat. I only wish you could sit in church where we
do, and see those Miss Fielders. Marianne and I
have counted six new hats apiece of those girls', —
new, you know, just out of the milliner's shop; and
last Sunday they came out in such lovely puffed tulle
bonnets! Were n't they lovely, Marianne? And next
Sunday, I don't doubt, there 'll be something else.”

“Yes,” said Miss Featherstone, — “their father,
they say, has made a million dollars lately on Government
contracts.”

“For my part,” said Jenny, “I think such extravagance,
at such a time as this, is shameful.”

“Do you know,” said I, “that I 'm quite sure the
Misses Fielder think they are practising rigorous economy?”

“Papa! Now there you are with your paradoxes!
How can you say so?”

“I should n't be afraid to bet a pair of gloves,
now,” said I, “that Miss Fielder thinks herself half
ready for translation, because she has bought only six
new hats and a tulle bonnet so far in the season. If
it were not for her dear bleeding country, she would
have had thirty-six, like the Misses Sibthorpe. If we
were admitted to the secret councils of the Fielders,
doubtless we should perceive what temptations they
daily resist; how perfectly rubbishy and dreadful they
suffer themselves to be, because they feel it important

now, in this crisis, to practise economy; how they
abuse the Sibthorpes, who have a new hat every time
they drive out, and never think of wearing one more
than two or three times; how virtuous and self-denying
they feel, when they think of the puffed tulle, for
which they only gave eighteen dollars, when Madame
Caradori showed them those lovely ones, like the
Misses Sibthorpe's, for forty-five; and how they go
home descanting on virgin simplicity, and resolving
that they will not allow themselves to be swept into
the vortex of extravagance, whatever other people
may do.”

“Do you know,” said Miss Featherstone, “I believe
your papa is right? I was calling on the oldest
Miss Fielder the other day, and she told me that she
positively felt ashamed to go looking as she did, but
that she really did feel the necessity of economy.
`Perhaps we might afford to spend more than some
others,' she said; `but it 's so much better to give the
money to the Sanitary Commission!'”

“Furthermore,” said I, “I am going to put forth
another paradox, and say that very likely there are
some people looking on my girls, and commenting
on them for extravagance in having three hats, even
though made over, and contrived from last year's
stock.”

“They can't know anything about it, then,” said

Jenny, decisively; “for, certainly, nobody can be
decent, and invest less in millinery than Marianne
and I do.”

“When I was a young lady,” said my wife, “a well-dressed
girl got her a new bonnet in the spring, and
another in the fall; — that was the extent of her purchases
in this line. A second-best bonnet, left of last
year, did duty to relieve and preserve the best one.
My father was accounted well-to-do, but I had no
more, and wanted no more. I also bought myself,
every spring, two pair of gloves, a dark and a light
pair, and wore them through the summer, and another
two through the winter; one or two pair of white kids,
carefully cleaned, carried me through all my parties.
Hats had not been heard of, and the great necessity
which requires two or three new ones every spring
and fall had not arisen. Yet I was reckoned a well-appearing
girl, who dressed liberally. Now, a young
lady who has a waterfall-hat, an oriole-hat, and a
jockey, must still be troubled with anxious cares for
her spring and fall and summer and winter bonnets,
— all the variety will not take the place of them.
Gloves are bought by the dozen; and as to dresses,
there seems to be no limit to the quantity of material
and trimming that may be expended upon them.
When I was a young lady, seventy-five dollars a year
was considered by careful parents a liberal allowance

for a daughter's wardrobe. I had a hundred, and was
reckoned rich; and I sometimes used a part to make
up the deficiencies in the allowance of Sarah Evans,
my particular friend, whose father gave her only fifty.
We all thought that a very scant allowance; yet she
generally made a very pretty and genteel appearance,
with the help of occasional presents from friends.”

“How could a girl dress for fifty dollars?” said
Marianne.

“She could get a white muslin and a white cambric,
which, with different sortings of ribbons, served
her for all dress-occasions. A silk, in those days,
took only ten yards in the making, and one dark silk
was considered a reasonable allowance to a lady's
wardrobe. Once made, it stood for something, —
always worn carefully, it lasted for years. One or two
calico morning-dresses, and a merino for winter wear,
completed the list. Then, as to collars, capes, cuffs,
etc., we all did our own embroidering, and very pretty
things we wore, too. Girls looked as prettily then as
they do now, when four or five hundred dollars a year
is insufficient to clothe them.”

“But, mamma, you know our allowance is n't anything
like that, — it is quite a slender one, though not
so small as yours was,” said Marianne. “Don't you
think the customs of society make a difference? Do
you think, as things are, we could go back and dress
for the sum you did?”

“You cannot,” said my wife, “without a greater
sacrifice of feeling than I wish to impose on you.
Still, though I don't see how to help it, I cannot but
think that the requirements of fashion are becoming
needlessly extravagant, particularly in regard to the
dress of women. It seems to me, it is making the
support of families so burdensome that young men
are discouraged from marriage. A young man, in a
moderately good business, might cheerfully undertake
the world with a wife who could make herself pretty
and attractive for seventy-five dollars a year, when he
might sigh in vain for one who positively could not
get through, and be decent, on four hundred. Women,
too, are getting to be so attached to the trappings and
accessories of life, that they cannot think of marriage
without an amount of fortune which few young men
possess.”

“You are talking in very low numbers about the
dress of women,” said Miss Featherstone. “I do
assure you that it is the easiest thing in the world for
a girl to make away with a thousand dollars a year,
and not have so much to show for it either as Marianne
and Jenny.”

“To be sure,” said I. “Only establish certain formulas
of expectation, and it is the easiest thing in the
world. For instance, in your mother's day girls talked
of a pair of gloves, — now they talk of a pack; then

it was a bonnet summer and winter, — now it is a bonnet
spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and hats like
monthly roses, — a new blossom every few weeks.”

“And then,” said my wife, “every device of the
toilet is immediately taken up and varied and improved
on, so as to impose an almost monthly necessity
for novelty. The jackets of May are outshone by
the jackets of June; the buttons of June are antiquated
in July; the trimmings of July are passées by
September; side-combs, back-combs, puffs, rats, and
all sorts of such matters, are in a distracted race of
improvement; every article of feminine toilet is on
the move towards perfection. It seems to me that an
infinity of money must be spent in these trifles, by
those who make the least pretension to keep in the
fashion.”

“Well, papa,” said Jenny, “after all, it 's just the
way things always have been since the world began.
You know the Bible says, `Can a maid forget her
ornaments?' It 's clear she can't. You see, it 's a
law of Nature; and you remember all that long chapter
in the Bible that we had read in church last Sunday,
about the curls and veils and tinkling ornaments
and crimping-pins, and all that of those wicked daughters
of Zion in old times. Women always have been
too much given to dress, and they always will be.”

“The thing is,” said Marianne, “how can any

woman, I, for example, know what is too much or
too little? In mamma's day, it seems, a girl could
keep her place in society, by hard economy, and
spend only fifty dollars a year on her dress. Mamma
found a hundred dollars ample. I have more
than that, and find myself quite straitened to keep
myself looking well. I don't want to live for dress,
to give all my time and thoughts to it; I don't wish
to be extravagant; and yet I wish to be lady-like; it
annoys and makes me unhappy not to be fresh and
neat and nice; shabbiness and seediness are my aversion.
I don't see where the fault is. Can one individual
resist the whole current of society? It certainly
is not strictly necessary for us girls to have half
the things we do. We might, I suppose, live without
many of them, and, as mamma says, look just as well,
because girls did so before these things were invented.
Now, I confess, I flatter myself, generally, that I am
a pattern of good management and economy, because
I get so much less than other girls I associate
with. I wish you could see Miss Thorne's fall dresses
that she showed me last year when she was visiting
here. She had six gowns, and no one of them could
have cost less than seventy or eighty dollars, and
some of them must have been even more expensive;
and yet I don't doubt that this fall she will feel that
she must have just as many more. She runs through
and wears out these expensive things, with all their
velvet and thread lace, just as I wear my commonest
ones; and at the end of the season they are really
gone, — spotted, stained, frayed, the lace all pulled
to pieces, — nothing left to save or make over. I
feel as if Jenny and I were patterns of economy,
when I see such things. I really don't know what
economy is. What is it?”

“There is the same difficulty in my housekeeping,”
said my wife. “I think I am an economist. I mean
to be one. All our expenses are on a modest scale,
and yet I can see much that really is not strictly
necessary; but if I compare myself with some of my
neighbors, I feel as if I were hardly respectable.
There is no subject on which all the world are censuring
one another so much as this. Hardly any one
but thinks her neighbors extravagant in some one or
more particulars, and takes for granted that she herself
is an economist.”

“I 'll venture to say,” said I, “that there is n't a
woman of my acquaintance that does not think she
is an economist.”

“Papa is turned against us women, like all the rest
of them,” said Jenny. “I wonder if it is n't just so
with the men?”

“Yes,” said Marianne, “it 's the fashion to talk as
if all the extravagance of the country was perpetrated

by women. For my part, I think young men are just
as extravagant. Look at the sums they spend for
cigars and meerschaums, — an expense which has n't
even the pretence of usefulness in any way; it 's a
purely selfish, nonsensical indulgence. When a girl
spends money in making herself look pretty, she contributes
something to the agreeableness of society;
but a man's cigars and pipes are neither ornamental
nor useful.”

“Then look at their dress,” said Jenny; “they are
to the full as fussy and particular about it as girls;
they have as many fine, invisible points of fashion,
and their fashions change quite as often; and they
have just as many knick-knacks, with their studs and
their sleeve-buttons and waistcoat-buttons, their scarfs
and scarf-pins, their watch-chains and seals and sealrings,
and nobody knows what. Then they often
waste and throw away more than women, because
they are not good judges of material, nor saving in
what they buy, and have no knowledge of how things
should be cared for, altered, or mended. If their cap
is a little too tight, they cut the lining with a penknife,
or slit holes in a new shirt-collar, because it
does not exactly fit to their mind. For my part, I
think men are naturally twice as wasteful as women.
A pretty thing, to be sure, to have all the waste of the
country laid to us!”

“You are right, child,” said I; “women are by
nature, as compared with men, the care-taking and
saving part of creation, — the authors and conservators
of economy. As a general rule, man earns and
woman saves and applies. The wastefulness of woman
is commonly the fault of man.”

“I don't see into that,” said Bob Stephens.

“In this way. Economy is the science of proportion.
Whether a particular purchase is extravagant
depends mainly on the income it is taken from. Suppose
a woman has a hundred and fifty a year for her
dress, and gives fifty dollars for a bonnet; she gives
a third of her income; — it is a horrible extravagance,
while for the woman whose income is ten thousand it
may be no extravagance at all. The poor clergyman's
wife, when she gives five dollars for a bonnet,
may be giving as much, in proportion to her income,
as the woman who gives fifty. Now the difficulty
with the greater part of women is, that the men who
make the money and hold it give them no kind of
standard by which to measure their expenses. Most
women and girls are in this matter entirely at sea,
without chart or compass. They don't know in the
least what they have to spend. Husbands and fathers
often pride themselves about not saying a word
on business-matters to their wives and daughters.
They don't wish them to understand them, or to

inquire into them, or to make remarks or suggestions
concerning them. `I want you to have everything
that is suitable and proper,' says Jones to his wife,
`but don't be extravagant.'

“`But, my dear,' says Mrs. Jones, `what is suitable
and proper depends very much on our means; if you
could allow me any specific sum for dress and house-keeping,
I could tell better.'

“`Nonsense, Susan! I can't do that, — it 's too
much trouble. Get what you need, and avoid foolish
extravagances; that 's all I ask.'

“By and by Mrs. Jones's bills are sent in, in an
evil hour, when Jones has heavy notes to meet, and
then comes a domestic storm.

“`I shall just be ruined, Madam, if that 's the way
you are going on. I can't afford to dress you and the
girls in the style you have set up; — look at this milliner's
bill!'

“`I assure you,' says Mrs. Jones, `we have n't got
any more than the Stebbinses, — nor so much.'

“`Don't you know that the Stebbinses are worth
five times as much as ever I was?'

“No, Mrs. Jones did not know it; — how should
she, when her husband makes it a rule never to speak
of his business to her, and she has not the remotest
idea of his income?

“Thus multitudes of good conscientious women

and girls are extravagant from pure ignorance. The
male provider allows bills to be run up in his name,
and they have no earthly means of judging whether
they are spending too much or too little, except the
semi-annual hurricane which attends the coming in
of these bills.

“The first essential in the practice of economy is a
knowledge of one's income, and the man who refuses
to accord to his wife and children this information has
never any right to accuse them of extravagance, because
he himself deprives them of that standard of
comparison which is an indispensable requisite in
economy. As early as possible in the education of
children they should pass from that state of irresponsible
waiting to be provided for by parents, and be
trusted with the spending of some fixed allowance,
that they may learn prices and values, and have some
notion of what money is actually worth and what it
will bring. The simple fact of the possession of a
fixed and definite income often suddenly transforms
a giddy, extravagant girl into a care-taking, prudent
little woman. Her allowance is her own; she begins
to plan upon it, — to add, subtract, multiply, divide,
and do numberless sums in her little head. She no
longer buys everything she fancies; she deliberates,
weighs, compares. And now there is room for self-denial
and generosity to come in. She can do without

this article; she can furbish up some older possession
to do duty a little longer, and give this money
to some friend poorer than she; and ten to one the
girl whose bills last year were four or five hundred
finds herself bringing through this year creditably on
a hundred and fifty. To be sure, she goes without
numerous things which she used to have. From the
stand-point of a fixed income she sees that these are
impossible, and no more wants them than the green
cheese of the moon. She learns to make her own
taste and skill take the place of expensive purchases.
She refits her hats and bonnets, retrims her dresses,
and in a thousand busy, earnest, happy little ways, sets
herself to make the most of her small income.

“So the woman who has her definite allowance for
housekeeping finds at once a hundred questions set
at rest. Before, it was not clear to her why she should
not `go and do likewise' in relation to every purchase
made by her next neighbor. Now, there is a clear
logic of proportion. Certain things are evidently not
to be thought of, though next neighbors do have
them; and we must resign ourselves to find some
other way of living.”

“My dear,” said my wife, “I think there is a peculiar
temptation in a life organized as ours is in
America. There are here no settled classes, with
similar ratios of income. Mixed together in the

same society, going to the same parties, and blended
in daily neighborly intercourse, are families of the
most opposite extremes in point of fortune. In England
there is a very well understood expression, that
people should not dress or live above their station;
in America none will admit that they have any particular
station, or that they can live above it. The
principle of democratic equality unites in society people
of the most diverse positions and means.

“Here, for instance, is a family like Dr. Selden's,
an old and highly respected one, with an income of
only two or three thousand, — yet they are people
universally sought for in society, and mingle in all the
intercourse of life with merchant-millionnaires whose
incomes are from ten to thirty thousand. Their sons
and daughters go to the same schools, the same parties,
and are thus constantly meeting upon terms of
social equality.

“Now it seems to me that our danger does not lie
in the great and evident expenses of our richer friends.
We do not expect to have pineries, graperies, equipages,
horses, diamonds, — we say openly and of
course that we do not. Still, our expenses are constantly
increased by the proximity of these things,
unless we understand ourselves better than most people
do. We don't of course, expect to get a fifteen-hundred-dollar
Cashmere, like Mrs. So-and-so, but we

begin to look at hundred-dollar shawls and nibble
about the hook. We don't expect sets of diamonds,
but a diamond ring, a pair of solitaire diamond earrings,
begins to be speculated about among the young
people as among possibilities. We don't expect to
carpet our house with Axminster and hang our windows
with damask, but at least we must have Brussels
and brocatelle, — it would not do not to. And
so we go on getting hundreds of things that we
don't need, that have no real value except that they
soothe our self-love, — and for these inferior articles
we pay a higher proportion of our income than our
rich neighbor does for his better ones. Nothing is
uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls; and yet a
young man just entering business will spend an eighth
of a year's income to put one of his wife, and when
he has put it there it only serves as a constant source
of disquiet, — for now that the door is opened, and
Cashmere shawls are possible, she is consumed with
envy at the superior ones constantly sported around
her. So also with point-lace, velvet dresses, and hundreds
of things of that sort, which belong to a certain
rate of income, and are absurd below it.”

“And yet, mamma, I heard Aunt Easygo say that
velvet, point-lace, and Cashmere were the cheapest
finery that could be bought, because they lasted a
lifetime.”

“Aunt Easygo speaks from an income of ten thousand
a year; they may be cheap for her rate of living,
— but for us, for example, by no magic of numbers
can it be made to appear that it is cheaper to have
the greatest bargain in the world in Cashmere, lace,
and diamonds, than not to have them at all. I never
had a diamond, never wore a piece of point-lace,
never had a velvet dress, and have been perfectly
happy, and just as much respected as if I had. Who
ever thought of objecting to me for not having them?
Nobody, as I ever heard.”

“Certainly not, mamma,” said Marianne.

“The thing I have always said to you girls is, that
you were not to expect to live like richer people, not
to begin to try, not to think or inquire about certain
rates of expenditure, or take the first step in certain
directions. We have moved on all our life after a
very antiquated and old-fashioned mode. We have
had our little old-fashioned house, our little old-fashioned
ways.”

“Except the parlor-carpet, and what came of it, my
dear,” said I, mischievously.

“Yes, except the parlor-carpet,” said my wife, with
a conscious twinkle, “and the things that came of it;
there was a concession there, but one can't be wise
always.”

“We talked mamma into that,” said Jenny.

“But one thing is certain,” said my wife, — “that,
though I have had an antiquated, plain house, and
plain furniture, and plain dress, and not the beginning
of a thing such as many of my neighbors have
possessed, I have spent more money than many of
them for real comforts. While I had young children,
I kept more and better servants than many women
who wore Cashmeres and diamonds. I thought it
better to pay extra wages to a really good, trusty
woman who lived with me from year to year, and
relieved me of some of my heaviest family-cares,
than to have ever so much lace locked away in my
drawers. We always were able to go into the country
to spend our summers, and to keep a good family-horse
and carriage for daily driving, — by which means
we afforded, as a family, very poor patronage to the
medical profession. Then we built our house, and
while we left out a great many expensive commonplaces
that other people think they must have, we
put in a profusion of bathing accommodations such
as very few people think of having. There never
was a time when we did not feel able to afford to
do what was necessary to preserve or to restore
health; and for this I always drew on the surplus
fund laid up by my very unfashionable housekeeping
and dressing.”

“Your mother has had,” said I, “what is the great

want in America, perfect independence of mind to go
her own way without regard to the way others go. I
think there is, for some reason, more false shame
among Americans about economy than among Europeans.
`I cannot afford it' is more seldom heard
among us. A young man beginning life, whose income
may be from five to eight hundred a year,
thinks it elegant and gallant to affect a careless air
about money, especially among ladies, — to hand it
out freely, and put back his change without counting
it, — to wear a watch-chain and studs and shirt-fronts
like those of some young millionnaire. None but the
most expensive tailors, shoemakers, and hatters will
do for him; and then he grumbles at the dearness of
living, and declares that he cannot get along on his
salary. The same is true of young girls, and of married
men and women too, — the whole of them are
ashamed of economy. The cares that wear out life
and health in many households are of a nature that
cannot be cast on God, or met by any promise from
the Bible, — it is not care for `food convenient,' or
for comfortable raiment, but care to keep up false appearances,
and to stretch a narrow income over the
space that can be covered only by a wider one.

“The poor widow in her narrow lodgings, with her
monthly rent staring her hourly in the face, and her
bread and meat and candles and meal all to be paid

for on delivery or not obtained at all, may find comfort
in the good old Book, reading of that other
widow whose wasting measure of oil and last failing
handful of meal were of such account before her
Father in heaven that a prophet was sent to recruit
them; and when customers do not pay, or wages are
cut down, she can enter into her chamber, and when
she hath shut her door, present to her Father in
heaven His sure promise that with the fowls of the
air she shall be fed and with the lilies of the field she
shall be clothed: but what promises are there for her
who is racking her brains on the ways and means to
provide as sumptuous an entertainment of oysters and
Champagne at her next party as her richer neighbor,
or to compass that great bargain which shall give her
a point-lace set almost as handsome as that of Mrs.
Crœsus, who has ten times her income?”

“But, papa,” said Marianne, with a twinge of that
exacting sensitiveness by which the child is characterized,
“I think I am an economist, thanks to you and
mamma, so far as knowing just what my income is,
and keeping within it; but that does not satisfy me,
and it seems that is n't all of economy; — the question
that haunts me is, Might I not make my little all
do more and better than I do?”

“There,” said I, “you have hit the broader and
deeper signification of economy, which is, in fact, the

science of comparative values. In its highest sense,
economy is a just judgment of the comparative value
of things, — money only the means of enabling one
to express that value. This is the reason why the
whole matter is so full of difficulty, — why every one
criticises his neighbor in this regard. Human beings
are so various, the necessities of each are so different,
they are made comfortable or uncomfortable by such
opposite means, that the spending of other people's
incomes must of necessity often look unwise from
our stand-point. For this reason multitudes of people
who cannot be accused of exceeding their incomes
often seem to others to be spending them foolishly
and extravagantly.”

“But is there no standard of value?” said Marianne.

“There are certain things upon which there is a
pretty general agreement, verbally, at least, among
mankind. For instance, it is generally agreed that
health is an indispensable good, — that money is well
spent that secures it, and worse than ill spent that
ruins it.

“With this standard in mind, how much money is
wasted even by people who do not exceed their income!
Here a man builds a house, and pays, in
the first place, ten thousand more than he need, for a
location in a fashionable part of the city, though the

air will be closer and the chances of health less; he
spends three or four thousand more on a stone front,
on marble mantles imported from Italy, on plate-glass
windows, plated hinges, and a thousand nice points
of finish, and has perhaps but one bath-room for a
whole household, and that so connected with his
own apartment that nobody but himself and his wife
can use it.

“Another man buys a lot in an open, airy situation,
which fashion has not made expensive, and builds
without a stone front, marble mantels, or plate-glass
windows, but has a perfect system of ventilation
through his house, and bathing-rooms in every story,
so that the children and guests may all, without inconvenience,
enjoy the luxury of abundant water.

“The first spends for fashion and show, the second
for health and comfort.

“Here is a man that will buy his wife a diamond
bracelet and a lace shawl, and take her yearly to
Washington to show off her beauty in ball-dresses,
who yet will not let her pay wages which will command
any but the poorest and most inefficient domestic
service. The woman is worn out, her life made a
desert by exhaustion consequent on a futile attempt to
keep up a showy establishment with only half the
hands needed for the purpose. Another family will
give brilliant parties, have a gay season every year at

the first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford
the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the
servants enough food to keep them from constantly
deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen,
the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort,
where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole
time, are witnesses to what such families consider
economy. Economy in the view of some is undisguised
slipshod sloveliness in the home-circle for
the sake of fine clothes to be shown abroad; it is
undisguised hard selfishness to servants and dependants,
counting their every approach to comfort a
needless waste, — grudging the Roman-Catholic cook
her cup of tea at dinner on Friday, when she must
not eat meat, — and murmuring that a cracked, second-hand
looking-glass must be got for the servants'
room: what business have they to want to know how
they look?

“Some families will employ the cheapest physician,
without regard to his ability to kill or cure; some will
treat diseases in their incipiency with quack medicines,
bought cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the
doctor's bill. Some women seem to be pursued by an
evil demon of economy, which, like an ignis fatuus in
a bog, delights constantly to tumble them over into
the mire of expense. They are dismayed at the quantity
of sugar in the recipe for preserves, leave out a

quarter, and the whole ferments and is spoiled. They
cannot by any means be induced at any one time to
buy enough silk to make a dress, and the dress finally,
after many convulsions and alterations, must be thrown
by altogether, as too scanty. They get poor needles,
poor thread, poor sugar, poor raisins, poor tea, poor
coal. One wonders, in looking at their blackened,
smouldering grates, in a freezing day, what the fire is
there at all for, — it certainly warms nobody. The
only thing they seem likely to be lavish in is funeral
expenses, which come in the wake of leaky shoes and
imperfect clothing. These funeral expenses at last
swallow all, since nobody can dispute an undertaker's
bill. One pities these joyless beings. Economy, instead
of a rational act of the judgment, is a morbid
monomania, eating the pleasure out of life, and haunting
them to the grave.

“Some people's ideas of economy seem to run simply
in the line of eating. Their flour is of an extra
brand, their meat the first cut; the delicacies of every
season, in their dearest stages, come home to their
table with an apologetic smile, — `It was scandalously
dear, my love, but I thought we must just treat
ourselves.' And yet these people cannot afford to
buy books, and pictures they regard as an unthought-of
extravagance. Trudging home with fifty dollars'
worth of delicacies on his arm, Smith meets Jones,

who is exulting with a bag of crackers under one arm
and a choice little bit of an oil painting under the
other, which he thinks a bargain at fifty dollars. `I
can't afford to buy pictures,' Smith says to his spouse,
`and I don't know how Jones and his wife manage.'
Jones and his wife will live on bread and milk for a
month, and she will turn her best gown the third time,
but they will have their picture, and they are happy.
Jones's picture remains, and Smith's fifty dollars' worth
of oysters and canned fruit to-morrow will be gone
forever. Of all modes of spending money, the swallowing
of expensive dainties brings the least return.
There is one step lower than this, — the consuming
of luxuries that are injurious to the health. If all the
money spent on tobacco and liquors could be spent
in books and pictures, I predict that nobody's health
would be a whit less sound, and houses would be
vastly more attractive. There is enough money spent
in smoking, drinking, and over-eating to give every
family in the community a good library, to hang everybody's
parlor-walls with lovely pictures, to set up in
every house a conservatory which should bloom all
winter with choice flowers, to furnish every dwelling
with ample bathing and warming accommodations,
even down to the dwellings of the poor; and in the
millennium I believe this is the way things are to be.

“In these times of peril and suffering, if the inquiry

arises, How shall there be retrenchment? I answer,
First and foremost retrench things needless, doubtful,
and positively hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the
meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the
same. Second, retrench all eating not necessary to
health and comfort. A French family would live in
luxury on the leavings that are constantly coming from
the tables of those who call themselves in middling
circumstances. There are superstitions of the table
that ought to be broken through. Why must you
always have cake in your closet? why need you feel
undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea-table?
Do without it a year, and ask yourselves if
you or your children, or any one else, have suffered
materially in consequence.

“Why is it imperative that you should have two or
three courses at every meal? Try the experiment of
having but one, and that a very good one, and see if
any great amount of suffering ensues. Why must
social intercourse so largely consist in eating? In
Paris there is a very pretty custom. Each family has
one evening in the week when it stays at home and
receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter
and cake, served in the most informal way, is the
only refreshment. The rooms are full, busy, bright,
— everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous
supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake,

were waiting to give the company a nightmare at the
close.

“Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife
in a social circle of this kind, `I ought to know them
well, — I have seen them every week for twenty years.'
It is certainly pleasant and confirmative of social enjoyment
for friends to eat together; but a little enjoyed
in this way answers the purpose as well as a great
deal, and better too.”

“Well, papa,” said Marianne, “in the matter of
dress now, — how much ought one to spend just to
look as others do?”

“I will tell you what I saw the other night, girls,
in the parlor of one of our hotels. Two middle-aged
Quaker ladies came gliding in, with calm, cheerful
faces, and lustrous dove-colored silks. By their conversation
I found that they belonged to that class of
women among the Friends who devote themselves to
travelling on missions of benevolence. They had just
completed a tour of all the hospitals for wounded soldiers
in the country, where they had been carrying
comforts, arranging, advising, and soothing by their
cheerful, gentle presence. They were now engaged
on another mission, to the lost and erring of their own
sex; night after night, guarded by a policeman, they
had ventured after midnight into the dance-houses
where girls are being led to ruin, and with gentle

words of tender, motherly counsel sought to win them
from their fatal ways, — telling them where they might
go the next day to find friends who would open to
them an asylum and aid them to seek a better life.

“As I looked upon these women, dressed with such
modest purity, I began secretly to think that the
Apostle was not wrong, when he spoke of women
adorning themselves with the ornament of a meek
and quiet spirit; for the habitual gentleness of their
expression, the calmness and purity of the lines in
their faces, the delicacy and simplicity of their apparel,
seemed of themselves a rare and peculiar beauty.
I could not help thinking that fashionable bonnets,
flowing lace sleeves, and dresses elaborately trimmed
could not have improved even their outward appearance.
Doubtless, their simple wardrobe needed but
a small trunk in travelling from place to place, and
hindered but little their prayers and ministrations.

“Now, it is true, all women are not called to such
a life as this; but might not all women take a leaf at
least from their book? I submit the inquiry humbly.
It seems to me that there are many who go monthly
to the sacrament, and receive it with sincere devotion,
and who give thanks each time sincerely that they are
thus made `members incorporate in the mystical body
of Christ,' who have never thought of this membership
as meaning that they should share Christ's sacrifices

for lost souls, or abridge themselves of one ornament
or encounter one inconvenience for the sake of those
wandering sheep for whom he died. Certainly there
is a higher economy which we need to learn, — that
which makes all things subservient to the spiritual and
immortal, and that not merely to the good of our own
souls and those of our family, but of all who are knit
with us in the great bonds of human brotherhood.

“There have been from time to time, among well-meaning
Christian people, retrenchment societies on
high moral grounds, which have failed for want of
knowledge how to manage the complicated question
of necessaries and luxuries. These words have a signification
in the case of different people as varied as
the varieties of human habit and constitution. It is a
department impossible to be bound by external rules;
but none the less should every high-minded Christian
soul in this matter have a law unto itself. It may
safely be laid down as a general rule, that no income,
however large or however small, should be unblessed
by the divine touch of self-sacrifice. Something for
the poor, the sorrowing, the hungry, the tempted, and
the weak should be taken from what is our own at the
expense of some personal sacrifice, or we suffer more
morally than the brother from whom we withdraw it.
Even the Lord of all, when dwelling among men, out
of that slender private purse which he accepted for

his little family of chosen ones, had ever something
reserved to give to the poor. It is easy to say, `It
is but a drop in the bucket. I cannot remove the
great mass of misery in the world. What little I could
save or give does nothing.' It does this, if no more,
— it prevents one soul, and that soul your own, from
drying and hardening into utter selfishness and insensibility;
it enables you to say I have done something;
taken one atom from the great heap of sins and miseries
and placed it on the side of good.

“The Sisters of Charity and the Friends, each with
their different costume of plainness and self-denial,
and other noble-hearted women of no particular outward
order, but kindred in spirit, have shown to
womanhood, on the battle-field and in the hospital,
a more excellent way, — a beauty and nobility before
which all the common graces and ornaments of the
sex fade, appear like dim candles by the pure, eternal
stars.”