It is odd, is it not, the way we are always saying that we "feel at home," or "not at home," or "homesick," or that something is "homelike"? What do we mean by it, anyway? When people try to tell what home is, they usually make poor work of it. It is not in the least necessary to tell what it is; a home is a thing to have, not to talk about. All I want to say here is that homes are not houses and furniture, but people. There is an Indian proverb which says, "The hearth is not a stone but a woman." Fathers and brothers have their own share in making their homes, but mothers and daughters are more apt to take care of their homes and stay in them. So it has come to be that making homes is a special and particular work of women.

Whatever work a girl may hope to do in the future, she will live somewhere, and whatever that somewhere is like, it should be as homelike as she can make it. This is partly on account of a good many people she will find who need a little pleasantness and comfort given to them, and partly because she will not be comfortable and happy herself unless she has something homelike about her. This is why it is a great advantage to be a woman; what power we have to make homes, we carry with us. Hawthorne says that a woman, who is especially gifted in this way, can make a home of any place, even though she is there but a few hours—a hotel bedroom, for instance. The Indian proverb, however, goes even further. It says, not that a woman can make a home, but that she is a home. That is, we should have the power to make people feel at home wherever we are.

Most women, though, have something more to make a home out of than themselves. They have little houses or big houses to keep. When they begin to do this they find themselves very glad of all the cleverness, and learning and experience which they can gather. It is much easier to do some of this gathering before one has a house of one's own, and ways of doing it lie all round us, often unrealized and unused.

Through most of our teens, school is the principal thing. Whether we are interested in it or not, it is then our recognized occupation. Nowadays, there are opportunities in many schools to learn things helpful in housekeeping. They are not only to be found in cooking and sewing classes. Chemistry and physics, which may one or other of them be required of you for college entrance examinations, are also of excellent service in housekeeping. Some of you will be in schools where you can choose to some extent what courses you take. In that case, do not say chemistry is "messy," and physics is "too hard," but just tussle with them for the sake of your home-making, as a boy would who knew he was to be a physician or an engineer. I hardly dare to mention it, but detested arithmetic, learned in school, often afterward saves the peace of a household and the happiness of the housekeeper. Personally, I have found what geometry I know useful on many unexpected occasions. But to turn to a more agreeable subject, I can recommend any course in light carpentry, for you will almost surely like it if you try it, and no one thing is more useful in a house—except perhaps, arithmetic.

If, on the contrary, you are in a school where there are no choices, or if you are obliged to narrow down to the requirements of a college entrance examination, the only thing to do is to keep in mind the things which will be especially useful to you—physical sciences, mathematics, manual training, domestic science; study some of them if you can, and, besides that, see what you can learn at home. I do not mean that the other things which you study at school are not useful in home-making; they are. It is just that certain things are part of the special training for this work, and those named above are the ones more usually taught in schools.

We turn now to the preparation which can be given to us, and which we give ourselves, at home. Ideally, this is the place to learn home-making.

If we have a home, whether it is a palace or a room in a tenement, some one in it "keeps house." If that person is one's mother, then is one the normal and fortunate person who learns in the normal and fortunate way, from being with her. If she does some of the work of the house herself, and we help her, we learn far more than we realize until some moment of emergency comes and we find that our eyes, and hands, and noses, and muscles are trained for service.

If your mother merely directs the affairs of her house and the details are carried out by others, watch how she does it, for this may be the way in which you will keep house; and persuade her to let you try it, sometime when she is to be absent. In this case there will be some one else in the house from whom you will need to take a few lessons. It will perhaps be a housekeeper, or a very trusted maid. Make friends with her and ask her questions. If she sees you want to learn and not to criticize she will become the most delighted, flattering teacher you ever dreamed of.

If your mother does part or all of the housework it will probably be one of your appointed duties to assist her. If it should happen, as is sometimes the case, that you are not required to help with the housework, then be a woman, and not a lap dog, and ask to help. In the proper story-book, a mother's response to such a request would be an affectionate answer and much patient teaching, and I think, in many, many cases, that is the reply a daughter does receive. But just suppose that you are one of the other cases. I can imagine a variety of answers you might get to "May I help?" One of them might be, "Go out of the kitchen, you'll spoil your clothes"; and others might be, "Don't bother me, I'm busy," or "Don't interrupt," or, "I'd rather do it myself than put up with your clumsiness."

The first thing to do when one gets an answer like this is to go away. The second is according to temperament; if you feel hurt and discouraged, then, try not to, or if you feel that your responsibility is ended by the refusal of your offer, then don't think that; it isn't true. Think rather, that you may have offered just at the wrong moment—you will find when you begin to keep house yourself that there are a good many wrong moments—or that there may have been some simpler thing you could have done which would have been a greater help. We might also consider the possibility that our way of helping has not been quite agreeable on some former occasion. Perhaps, alas, we may be clumsy, or we may be slow, or we may be more nuisance than help just at first. After we have gone away and thought ourselves quiet, then we must do that most difficult and heroic of things—try again to help the person by whom we have been rebuffed.

You see I speak entirely of your side in this matter. That is because neither you nor I may be permitted to pass judgment on your mother. She is like some one about whom we have read a short story, we only know one little period of her life and only a few of her thoughts and feelings even then. She must always remain a bit of a mystery to us, because we can never know very much about what happened before we were born.

There is a thing which makes helping mothers difficult, that one must guard oneself against, especially because it is so natural and so insidious. It is especially a snare when we learn about housekeeping outside of our homes, though it very frequently lies in wait for us anyway. It is the desire to reform our homes and our mothers, and that instantly. I venture to say that the trouble with this lies in the instantly. The ways you are taught at school may be better than mother's ways; but, on the contrary, mother's ways may be the result of practical experience, and they may be an adaptation to the practical needs and tastes of her family. It may be that the things you learn are better adapted to your own generation and your own future housekeeping than they are to your parents' tastes and needs. You are the future, but remember that your parents are the past, without which you would never have been. There is this also to consider, that as we grow older, we grow toward orthodoxy. We place our faith in the "new thing" of the hour, and in a little while, find that it was proved impracticable ten centuries ago. While we are deciding that the old people we know are narrow-minded old fogies, behold, some girl or boy tells us that the reason we do not believe in their theory of the universe is because we are "old-fashioned." To you, young, thoughtful, and alive, belongs the belief that you are born to make the world better; and this is true. Not, however, by tearing down is this accomplished, but by building up. And the building is done by laying in a lifetime one small stone in the structure, ages old, which has its foundations in the deeps of the universe, and upon whose finished spires shall shine the glory of Heaven.

But there—it is of some practical ways of helping mother, and thereby learning housekeeping, that I wish to speak just now. They belong to the class of things called little services, but I can assure you, they are great, in tact, and helpfulness and love. They are homely; but they are just the sort of things angels would like to do. Dusting is one of them, the little everyday dusting which makes such a difference in the tidiness of the house, and perhaps takes five minutes, or less, to a room. With this goes taking up crumbs in the dining room, with a sweeper or dustpan and brush, and arranging flowers and watering plants. Tidying means removing dirt and litter, and putting each thing in the place where it belongs. Tidiness is not a housekeeper's superstition; it is a mechanical device for invoking the spirit of restfulness.

Another homely thing always needing to be done is mending. It is, by nature, incidental work, and therefore it is especially grateful to the housekeeper to have it done by an incidental helper. I do not mean merely darning stockings and sewing on buttons though that is the larger part of it, but also, mending which is done with hammer and tacks, or glue, or perhaps a varnish brush. I mean all those odd jobs which pursue the busy housewife in the hours when she ought to rest. Get your mother to write a list of these odd jobs on her memorandum pad, as she sees or thinks of them during the day, then see how many of them you can find a way to do.

If your household does not include a waitress, there is a class of small services which need to be done before each meal. One is not quite so sure to be at home at meal times, as if one were a boy, but one can arrange to be. Certain things are needed on the table which come from the refrigerator or the cellar, cool things which should be put on at the last moment. The cook has already fifty things to do at the last moment, and few things relieve her more than to know that she need not think of the table until she puts the meal upon it. I saw a girl, once, looking at the dining-room table, and tapping out some sort of rhythm with four finger-tips against her cheek. She owned up that she was saying to herself, "Bread, butter, milk and water"—four things which she had made it her business to see on the table before each meal. Sometimes there were jelly and pickles and other relishes to put on, but these four, which she counted off on her fingers and her cheek, were the essentials.

Wiping and putting away the dishes is a small service which one can do often and acceptably. It is elsewhere described, but is also mentioned here because it belongs to this list of opportunities.

If your mother, or whoever does the cooking in your house, likes to be helped with it, there will be many little things which you can do, like beating eggs for instance, or shelling peas. No one can tell you what they are, though, except the person who is cooking.

How many, and which of these small services you are able to do, depend on how long your school hours are, and on what sort of health you have, and on how much of the housework is done by the family. It is not fatal if you do not do any of them, provided your reason is not laziness or selfishness.

There is another group of small things, helpful, but more personal to yourself, which you are less likely to be prevented from doing. You probably have a room, or half a one, and a closet, and bureau drawers, and certainly clothes, which are your own. Possession means responsibility. If we find this sharp-cornered foundation-stone of truth in the depths of our own bureau drawers, it is less likely to fall heavily on us later on. Our own things and the places in which they are kept should be our own care, and not another's.

It may not be your business to do the periodical sweeping in your room, but the daily dusting and tidying the household authorities will be glad to have you do.

You cannot find a better way to learn to make beds than to make your own, for in that case you get the benefit of the insufficient airing or the crease, or the crumb, which you have let go. If, for some reason, you cannot make your bed every day, try to do it on Sunday. It is a custom of gentleness from one woman to another.

Keeping a room in order is accomplished by the same means that any tidiness is brought about, that is, by having a place for things and seeing that they are there. The things that most girls want in their rooms are apt to be hard to keep in order. They are things which our heartless elders call "trash." I would not undertake to say what a girl's room should or should not contain, but I would ask her not to have so many things that they are either never neat or else a tormenting care; not to hang things on her walls which are vulgar or silly; and not to leave her clothes and little adornments for other people to put away. Keeping one's own possessions in order is a reasonable service to others, and one of the natural, gradual ways of learning home-making.

Will you turn over a few pages and read the suggestions about the fittings and care of closets you will find in the chapter on upstairs work? Bureau drawers, however, are not mentioned elsewhere than here, for I consider them the private property of individuals, to be cared for by their owners and not to be intruded upon by others except in emergency. Articles put in drawers should be classified as far as possible, and things used least often should be put in drawers least easy to get at. Suppose, for instance, a bureau has four drawers, the lowest is probably deepest and requires stooping to open it. In it can go best waists, and sashes, and girdles, and scarfs, and fluffy objects which should lie loosely. In the third drawer underclothes might be put; to be folded and packed close does not hurt them. As they are things which go into the wash, they should be worn in rotation, and this is accomplished without thought or trouble if we pile all the garments of the same kind together and always put the newly washed ones on the top or the bottom of the pile, and take the ones we are to wear from the opposite place. It takes a great many troublesome words to describe this action, which is very simple, and almost immediately becomes mechanical. In the second drawer of this possible bureau might go collars, and handkerchiefs, and gloves, and ties, and things which must be kept uncrumpled. If one has ample room, pretty boxes are good to keep these things in, and they make for neatness. If one must economize space, it is better to have some squares of silk, or pretty coloured linen or silkoline in which one's possessions can be laid flat, and then the four corners of the wrapper folded over upon them. I have found these more convenient to get into and more easily washed than regular veil and necktie and glove cases.

The top drawer is the one which locks most securely, because it is under the top of the bureau, instead of under another drawer which might be removed. It is therefore the one in which people usually keep the things which they especially value, and their pocketbooks or handbags. If a part of the top drawer is set apart for the collars, ties, handkerchiefs, hair ribbons and belts which are in immediate use, it will assist immensely to keep a room and bureau top neat. One does not wish to put things, which have been worn, away with things which are perfectly fresh, and one wants the belt and ribbons which one wears for two or three days in succession close at hand. If they are folded or rolled up to keep them shapely, and put in a space in the top drawer which has been chosen for the purpose, time and tidying will be saved. The space will need emptying out frequently, but that can be done on those Saturdays when one is seized with a sudden clearing-up fit.

Care of our clothes is not directly related to housekeeping—it is only a collateral relation. A neat house, however, is marred if the housekeeper herself is untidy. For our immediate purpose, though, the point is, that the habit of caring for our clothes, and the deftness and inventiveness which such care requires, are qualities constantly useful in housekeeping. I met a woman once, who boasted that she did not know how to hold a needle, but give her a hammer and nails and she could do anything. I happened to see her later with a hammer and nails, and she was clutching the hammer close to the head, and pounding in nails with more disregard for the help of leverage, than if she had been a cave-woman pounding a stake with a stone. Some people can hammer who cannot sew; and some people can sew who cannot hammer; some people can do neither, and some people can do both. But the fact remains that if we can use our hands and heads cleverly for one thing, we have a better chance of using them cleverly for another; and blacking shoes, and binding skirts, and mending stockings, and putting in ruchings, are steps in an apprenticeship to more interesting and clever work. Incidentally, too, we are giving ourselves that exquisite daintiness which is one of a girl's charms.

At least one means of learning something of housekeeping lies open to every creature. That means is an observing interest. We never remain entirely ignorant of the things in which we are interested. We gather ideas about them everywhere, and in the most unexpected and unintentional places. If we sit at tables where the meals are carefully served and well cooked, that privilege teaches many things about serving and cooking. There is as much to learn in a cheap restaurant, if we watch how things are done, and think out the reason for the methods. If we watch a servant or a housewife doing work well, we need never again be entirely ignorant of how to do that work. If we read a book or hear a lecture, or overhear a scrap of talk in a street car which contains a thought to help us or an unusual method to be tried, it ought to stick to our memories as if magnetized. Think in the morning that you want to know something about the cats in Thibet, and almost surely before night, you will have heard or read something about them. We know how often this is true of remote and unusual affairs; it is infinitely more true of intimate daily ones. It is a great blessing; a means of getting knowledge without other struggle than remembering what we want to know. If it is not a royal road, it is at least a royal by-path, to learning.

Some day, you will discover that you are "grown up," and if you have learned what you could and helped when you could, you will discover, too, that you have the gift and power to make a home—that you are a woman, who is not a stone but a hearth.

PART III

MY HERITAGE

I

MY HERITAGE

"It is a fair ground." Then—"yea, I have a goodly heritage." There is joy in beauty, and in possession—and more than that. There is exultation in the vision of seed-time and harvest, of growing beauty and usefulness, of life renewed; and in the strength and power to work for all this and to achieve it.

It is not fanciful to say that a woman may regard her heritage in some such way as this. The childhood, and the homes of the world are hers, and her work is the making of men and women. If she chooses to say that God has exalted His handmaiden, who is able to deny it?

The particular work of women is not just like any other work; indolence and failure in doing it, however, have been too often excused on account of this fact. Their work is yearly becoming more and more allied with other commercial, intellectual and moral activities. Even their housekeeping is no longer a disagreeable thing kept out of sight as much as possible, as the plumbing used to be. Its varied problems are being recognized and studied. Nobody denies that they are difficult, but it is not reasonable to suppose that they are the most difficult in the world, nor that they are unsolvable. One reason why they are difficult is that they are an attempt to establish order and law, without destroying individuality and freedom; and another reason is that the housewife exercises her profession chiefly for the benefit of her own family. If the physician had to doctor himself, the preacher preach to his wife, and the teacher teach his own children, their professions might be in as much confusion as the housekeeping profession is. The efforts to do away with these difficulties by having families live together, eat together, or do anything else in a wholesale way, have not succeeded and have led in a wrong direction. What is wanted is a way to preserve the separate family and the separate family home, not a way to make them into something else.

Difficulty is a characteristic of their work which should appeal to women. They are seeking to do difficult things. They are seeking to prove that there is no profession, nor labour, nor art in which they cannot succeed. In many cases they have succeeded admirably; it has not proved the point they set out to prove however, but another. What they have proved by their activities is that they are amply able to solve the problems and accomplish the organization of the work which is especially their own. They cannot get it believed that they are equal to anything while their own work lies undone—while they wilfully leave the home or helplessly stay in it.

Things which we are proud to do in other fields, we neither see nor do in our own. For the sake of a college degree, or a paper to be read before a club, we delve in difficult books; yet we do not study, nor even read about our own work. We would be proud to invent a flying machine, or a mud-digger, yet most of the inventions to aid housework are made by men. We aspire to be stockbrokers, merchants, accountants, bankers—while housekeeping finance has become a stock joke. We are eager to study social problems and take up settlement work, but we do not think it worth while to study our own cooks. We feel in ourselves a power to organize and betake us to the club, and leave the cook and the nursemaid to organize our homes and our children's lives. We have raised the woman's work of teaching and of nursing into excellent professions, and yet we are ready to sit down and cry before the difficulties of housekeeping.

Unpleasant and monotonous things, which we claim make our own work unbearable, we ignore in occupations which we covet or admire. Under Mr. Kipling's influence we cultivate an enthusiasm for machinery and engineering, but we neglect his constantly emphasized lesson that the digging of a canal or the building of a bridge involves humble toil and unsightly details far beyond any we may encounter in peeling potatoes or washing dishes. We look at the wide, slow waters which have been let into the land and they silence us; we follow with our eyes the great span of the bridge and hold our breath as if it were music. It is right that we wonder and admire. They are great things. But see that woman beside you who is looking at the bridge with such especial interest. Is the bridge any more wonderful than her son, who built it? He is what she has built. It seems to me, one might peel several tons of potatoes as a thank-offering for a son.

But I will not take such high ground as to suppose that we might be willing to do some hard and disagreeable things just because we feel very earnestly the privilege and glory of being women. Much more ordinary considerations urge us to get about our work. If the engineer son of whom we were speaking said, "Estimates make me nervous," or, "I hate dealing with dirty, foreign labourers," or, "You can't expect me to concern myself with the nasty river-bottom when I have the arch of a bridge in my mind," or, "This work is so monotonous, I certainly have a right to one day a week when I can go to town and shop"—if he said these things, we should say he was—effeminate.

Effeminate!

Our times are so quick that, if we went earnestly to work, the next generation would see nothing in the remarks quoted above, to suggest a woman.

And do you know that this work of ours is a profession in which we can be as clever, and independent, and advanced, and emancipated as we please, and no man will like us the less for it. They like us to be inconsistent and unexpected, and they do not like us to know more than they do. But if we can keep house thriftily and comfortably and not bother them with it, they like that. In this we are not their rivals. They like our charming unexpectedness better elsewhere than in the butcher's bills; and they love the inconsistency of the woman who, in the home which her cleverness and toil have made peaceful and adequate, is yet full of pleasure and wonder at the things her husband or her son has accomplished.

This is my thought of our fair heritage of clever, helpful and devoted work, with its goodly promise of a harvest of people whom we have helped to be happier and better. Such is the country of my Vision.

II

THE PLAN

If we wish the people for whom we keep house to be well and happy, and good, we shall plan to make them so, as earnestly and definitely as if we were making a train schedule, or drawing the plans of a house, or writing the outline of a book.

The object of a housekeeping plan may be an ideal, but the plan is based on a definite, practical fact—the amount of income. The plan itself is the record of the choices made in the outlay of that amount of income.

The first thing for a family to do when they wish to make a plan, is to impress on their minds, not what they think they will have or what they think they ought to have, but the definite amount of money which they have. Some people gamble who do not go to races or play cards. They bet on futurity by spending something they expect to make, or risk a purchase on the security of Aunt Maria's usual Christmas present. The indications of this sort of gambling are the casual remarks one hears too often; "I just had to have it," or "We could not keep up our position without it," or, "I can't have my children dressed like beggars," or "It was awfully expensive, but I will save on something else." They are silly words and not honest. Silly, because they mean that some momentary self-indulgence has been thought worth the price of long unrest and anxiety; not honest, because if people have what they cannot pay for, they have what some one else has paid for as truly as if they had carried off a parcel belonging to the person standing beside them at a counter. In that matter of Aunt Maria, there is an extra offense. A gift should bring some special pleasure, or meet some special emergency. Counted on, or spent beforehand, it gives no happy surprise, no unexpected pleasure or relief; and what is worse, Aunt Maria gets no more happiness from making the gift than she would from paying the interest on a mortgage. Counting on gifts is a mean trick. If a child's parents do this, they cannot reasonably blame him for calculating the inheritance he will acquire at their death.

The income from some kinds of work is of necessity uncertain. This makes the housekeeping plan especially difficult. Probably the wisest way to meet this is to pretend that one's income is an amount somewhat under one's brightest hopes, and to live on that amount. In case of a disappointment, there is not then so large a deficit to struggle with; or, if the hopes come true, the surplus can very easily be put into a needed garment or a needed pleasure, or perhaps into the savings bank. Some people manage uncertain incomes by the month instead of the year. The trouble with this is that there is likely to be "always a feast or a famine," and that is demoralizing. As far as possible, a family should have an established style of living, to be changed only gradually, as an assured income increases.

This thing called the style of living is the insidious, untiring rival of that hard, cold fact, the amount of income. The two are forever quarrelling. Logically, the amount of income should settle the style of living, but often people spend weary lives trying to stretch the hard fact to fit its ever-increasing rival. This conflict is the source of most household troubles, and quarrels, and sorrows. What is the matter? Why is one less ashamed to wear one's heart on one's sleeve than a patch? Why would you rather owe the grocer, than say to your friend, "I can't afford it?" Why, when I say I am not ashamed to be poor, does the blood rise in my cheeks to belie my words? Poverty is not a badge of failure and laziness. It is often a decoration for high principle, or for noble self-sacrifice,—it is the lady-love of saints.

Very soon and very often in housekeeping, whatever may be the income, the conflict will arise between needs and wants and the financial ability to supply them. For this struggle we must gather our common sense and courage. They will help us to choose the things which really matter, and to laugh at ourselves for pretending to have what we have not.

Some husbands and wives make the financial plans of the family together. In other cases, the husband decides what amount of the income should be spent on the table, and the wife plans only the expenditure of that. The households in which the wife buys and the husband pays without consultation or agreement, exist, but let us hope they are few. Then, there is the household in which the woman is financier, and the man lives on an allowance. And, of course, there are a great number of households which are not complete families, but are groups of people, related or unrelated, who make their homes together, and in which the division of income is made by one person, or by the group, as they wish or are compelled by circumstances.

Plans for a whole income are considered here because they include the problems and details of less elaborate plans.

As has been said, the first thing for a family to do is to find out their definite income, irrespective of Aunt Maria. Incomes of all sizes are lived on in some way. The way which their income will cover, is the style of living suitable for a family. If the family income pinches, however, and there is some way of increasing it which does not destroy the home life, nor work some member of the family to death, then it is well to take that way. But only in cases verging on starvation, should an increase in income be made by the homemaker leaving her housekeeping, or the breadwinner working eighteen hours a day.

When the amount of the income is found out, the next thing is to divide it among the family needs in a reasonable proportion. This proportion is decided in the first place according to necessity, and in the second, according to taste.

Let us take for illustration a family with an income of $2,000 a year. And then let us take, from Mrs. Ellen H. Richards's book called "The Cost of Living," the following proportions for an income of that amount.

Translated into dollars this is:

The next thing is to find out whether this is a possible proportion for us, if this income is our own.

Food, $500 a year, $9.61 a week, $1.37 a day—we shall probably think this a possible allowance.

Rent $400 a year, $33 a month—here there may be a difficulty.

If we own a house in a country town or a suburb, we can probably pay the taxes and make repairs, and have something left from $400. If we rent a house in a country town or in a not too popular suburb we can perhaps get it for less than $400, but in the latter case, the remainder may need to be used in carfares if some member of the family has to go to the city every day. If we live in a flat in a large city, it is an uninviting one that can be had for $33 a month, and even so, nothing is left for carfares. Regular carfares are usually reckoned in the department with the rent, because the place where one's home is situated determines their amount.

Here are two cases, then, in which the proportion for rent does not work. The first, in which there is more money than is necessary to provide a dwelling, is easily arranged. The surplus can be used for more clothes, or more "help," or to satisfy more of the unfailing supply of miscellaneous needs, or it can be put by for future needs.

The second case, in which we feel we must have a $40 flat and have only $33 with which to pay for it, is not as hopeless as it looks. For the next thing in the table of proportions is $300 a year for running expenses, that is, wages, fuel, light, water, etc. Here is at once a partial solution of the rent difficulty. In that forty-dollar flat, heat and water are supplied. If we use gas for cooking, $7 a month will be an average gas bill for a careful family, that is $84 a year. This amount will likewise cover the expense if we use gas for light and coal for the range. Then if we pay three dollars a week to an inexperienced girl, or $1.50 a day for two days a week to a combination washerwoman and scrubwoman, that will be $156 a year. Our running expenses will then be $240 a year. The $60 saved will pay $5 a month on the rent, and we shall then need only $2 a month more to secure the forty-dollar flat.

Next, $300 for clothes. In a year when things have lasted over, we may be able to get the $2 a month for the rent from this department. If, on the contrary, there is a new overcoat, or a new street dress to buy, or a new member of the family to clothe, then it cannot be spared.

The next division is $500 for holidays, recreations, books, charity, savings, doctors' bills and all unclassified expenses. This is the division which is most difficult to manage. If we think we cannot spare that $24 from the clothes department, we shall need to consider very carefully whether we take it from this, or from the food department. We shall have to consider the price of food in the neighbourhood; the health of the family; how much they need a holiday; whether there is any special purpose for which we must save; whether there is some piece of furniture much needed; whether there is a present which we greatly desire to give. And these are only samples of the things which will need to be considered. A choice must be made, though, however difficult, for when one item of expenditure in the family life is exceptionally large, there is but one thing to do, that is, to decide, reasonably and carefully, in what other department of living the expenditure can be lessened.

In this case of a high rent which has just been described, see in the table below what has happened.

The high rent is balanced by a saving in running expenses and in some item of miscellaneous expense.

This is merely a suggestion of the way in which a housekeeping plan is worked out. Every family has its own needs and wants, and its income must be proportioned to suit them as far as possible. If your income is larger than the one used as an example, you will find that the department of miscellaneous expenses will grow and need to be subdivided many times—you will have more concerts than cabbages—if, on the contrary, your income is less than the example, you will find that the food and rent departments will begin to swallow up the other departments.

An example of the extreme of this is exhibited by a budget of housekeeping expenses given by Mr. Arthur Morrison in the Fortnightly Review a few years ago, for a family with an income of £1 10s. a week—about $7.50 a week and $390 a year.

This table, roughly calculated, gives the following proportions:

Nearly half the income was used for food; the same proportion for rent as it is reckoned should be paid by a family with an income of $2,000; and about a third ($2.50 in our money) was left for fuel, clothes, and every other need or want. Yet Mr. Morrison says that if the wife is not lazy and the husband does not drink, a family can live in London on this income and manage to be well and decent. "Pretty hard!"—yes. "Pretty sordid!"—no. Courage and perseverance and self-denial made that budget, such as most of us save up for heroic occasions, and would not think of expending upon marketing and meal getting.

One cannot be as definite about housekeeping plans as one would like to be in dealing with such a definite and practical subject. In the nature of things, each family must decide on the purposes for which its income is used, and on the amount to be devoted to each. I cannot, however, emphasize too strongly the necessity of definiteness on the part of those dealing with their own actual incomes. A carefully thought out plan of expenditure, written down and earnestly adhered to, is a family backbone. A first plan has to be made somewhat in the dark, but every year brings enlightenment and confidence. Though the purposes for which their income is used are for each family to decide upon, yet I venture to lay stress upon three purposes which are often subdivisions of that general and entirely voluntary department of miscellaneous expenses. For convenience, I shall call them, "Allowances," "The Tenth," and "Savings."

There is an odd sort of innate privacy about money matters. Children are taught that it is ill-bred to open other peoples' pocketbooks or checkbooks, or to ask them what their possessions cost. As they grow up they find that business affairs are considered confidential, and that no honourable person investigates another's money affairs without some authority. It is desirable that these rules of honour should be preserved, and one simple way to help in this is to arrange that each member of the family has an allowance, if it is only five cents a week—an allowance for which he is responsible to himself alone. These allowances should go down in the family accounts as "Allowances," the details belong to the individual. The members of families in which this arrangement is made should conscientiously keep their private expenses within the amount agreed upon, for allowances not only teach the right of individual privacy, they teach that old and difficult lesson that "you can't eat your cake and have it too";—that one can't have marbles and candy the same week. An allowance also supplies each person with something to give away, which is really his to give. He may not have earned it by work, but he has earned it by going without something he would have liked to spend it for. There is yet another purpose which allowances serve. They help to prevent the failure of a plan of expenditure. For they keep a strict and careful plan from becoming a galling chain. They prevent the absorption of personal privacy and freedom by the regulations of the family as a group against which the individual, sooner or later, invariably rebels.

"The Tenth" is that part of the family income, more or less than an actual tenth, which is given away. It is not mine to offer advice as to the size or use of this division. I merely emphasize its necessity. It is the small thing, which keeps meanness and bitterness out of the management of scanty means, and selfishness and brutality out of the management of ample means. Establish a give-away division in your plan, for the sake of your own disposition, if you are not urged to it by any other consideration.

Next to this division, which is considered the generous division, comes one which has a less agreeable reputation, but undeservedly—"Savings." Many people who will say giving is a good thing, will deny that saving is. And is it? Why? What is it for? It is to provide those who suffer adversity, or who live to old age, against becoming a "public charge"; or against dependence upon relatives and friends. There is a fine honour in not taking the risk of these things. One ought to be willing to struggle hard and self-denyingly to save oneself and one's family from becoming burdens to other people.

Perhaps you say, "But why pinch and save for something which may never happen?" If you speak as one solitary individual, it is true, you may die before old age; it is the rare family, however, in which some member does not need a provision for a last period of helplessness. Then, there are those things called adversities, and those things called opportunities, which turn to adversities if they cannot be used. Do you know many people, who have not at some time been in a difficulty where they needed money, or who have not had a chance that depended on an outfit or a pledge? Is it reasonable to expect to run to some one else for help at such times?

And, by the way, to whom would you run? To the friend who is the open-handed, good companion, or to the careful, farseeing friend? Of the two, which is the more to be depended upon, the more finely honourable, the more worthy to be imitated?

There are two very usual ways of keeping savings. Life insurance is one of them. It is more than a way of keeping savings, for in most cases, the amount finally received is more than the amount paid in. It has this advantage, and also the advantage that the savings thus laid by are only available at a time of great need—sickness, accident or death—or sometimes, after a long period of years. It has the corresponding disadvantages that these savings are not available for small needs, and also that they may be lost, if for any reason the subsequent premiums cannot be paid.

A savings-bank account is another way of keeping savings. Savings banks will take money in very small sums and will pay a reasonable interest on it. This method of keeping savings has the advantage that the money can be drawn whenever it is needed, but the resulting disadvantage that the account may be small at the moment of sudden need. If it is possible, as it often is, to have both a life insurance and a savings-bank account, a household may feel well protected against calamity, and well provided against sudden wants.

If some member of a family has a life insurance, a definite premium will have to be paid at definite times. A savings-bank account is not so insistent. But to succeed in saving and to do it with as little discomfort as possible, it is better to put ten dollars or ten cents into an account on the first day of the month, and forget about it, than to save five cents in carfare on Monday, one cent on a newspaper on Tuesday, ten cents on lunch on Wednesday, and so on.

You will say that it amounts to the same thing. That if that money is put into the bank, all these little pinching economies will have to be borne as a consequence. That is logical, but only to a certain extent true in practice. In one case, that of the definite amount put away monthly, the money is saved because it is not there to spend; in the other case, it is there, but is saved with the thought of saving. The latter method means going without everything that possibly can be gone without. It is the method by which one fills a Lenten mitebox—it is disciplinary, that is, it is meant to hurt a little, and it does. People do not keep Lent all the year, however; it is an especial season for an especial purpose. At some time of serious difficulty in household affairs, it may become necessary to save in this Lenten way, but the usual, regular sort of saving, which is a duty for life with most of us, should be done as far as possible by a decision once carefully made, and afterward automatically carried out.

I wish I could in some way show the pleasant side of the matter of savings. There is much comfort and gladness in the possession of a small reserve fund. The mere sight of the big, ugly Savings Bank which contains it can give new courage. We look up at the building in passing and know we have there the chance to start again if we are not succeeding; a holiday if we very much need one; weeks to recover in if we are ill; protection from dependence upon other people; the power to keep some one we love from suffering; and the joy of sometimes giving a gift.

And now, a word more on the subject of choices.

In a little town I know, there live two old women. One will not go to prayer meeting because she cannot afford to put five cents into the collection basket; the other goes every week and contributes one bright penny. She devoutly brightens it on a piece of old carpet before she starts. As it is such a little gift, it must be made as fair as possible.

There is a stern business principle in the whole of life. It is that law of choice of which we spoke at first. If we have a thing, we must in some way pay for it, we cannot have the thing and its price too. We pay in various commodities: in work, in money, in time, in ability, in thoughtfulness, in suffering; but in some way we pay. It is not a harsh and ungenerous law; it is to be rejoiced in. God meant us to be self-supporting, not objects of charity.

The trouble with His law is made by us. Some of us try to get out of paying at all; some of us are angry because we would rather pay in something we have not. We would rather pay for food and clothes with money only, instead of with a little money and much thought and labour. We would like to buy our friend a birthday gift, instead of writing that birthday letter which costs us thoughtfulness and an ache in our pride. Because we cannot afford a holiday, we will not pay for comfort and pleasantness at home with the coin of gaiety, or a favourite dessert, or a new book from the Library.

Each of you, and I, whatever our incomes, have our choices of this kind to make, and the price of them to pay.

—It is prayer-meeting night. Shall we stay at home?—Or rub up a penny?

III

THE ACCOUNTS