ady now and then?"

"Yes."

"Particularly during the opera season?"

"Yes. I'm not so selfish as always to indulge in these pleasures
alone."

"Very well. Now for the cost. Sometimes the opera is one dollar. So
it costs two dollars when you take a lady."

"Which is not very often."

"Will fifty cents a week, averaging the year, meet this expense?"

After thinking for some time, Hoffman said yes, he thought that
fifty cents a week would be a fair appropriations.

"Which adds another item of twenty-six dollars a year to your
expenses."

"But would you cut off everything?" objected Hoffman. "Is a man to
have no recreations, no amusements?"

"That is another question," coolly answered Hamilton. "Our present
business is to ascertain what has become of the two hundred and
sixteen dollars which remained of your salary after boarding and
clothing bills were paid. That is a handsome gold chain. What did it
cost?"

"Eighteen dollars."

"Bought lately?"

"Within six months."

"So much more accounted for. Is that a diamond pin?"

Hoffman colored a little as he answered,--

"Not a very costly one. Merely a scarf-pin, as you see. Small,
though brilliant. Always worth what I paid for it."

"Cost twenty-five or thirty dollars?"

"Twenty-five."

"Shall I put that down as one of the year expenses?"

"Yes, you may do so."

"What about stage and car hire? Do you ride or walk to and from
business?"

"I ride, of course. You wouldn't expect me to walk nearly a mile
four times a day."

"I never ride, except in bad weather. The walk gives me just the
exercise I need. Every man, who is confined in a store or
counting-room during business hours, should walk at least four miles
a day. Taken in installments of one mile at a time, at good
intervals, there is surely no hardship in this exercise. Four rides,
at six-pence a ride and we have another item of twenty-five cents at
day. You go down town nearly every evening?"

"Yes."

"And ride both ways?

"Yes."

"A shilling more, or thirty seven and a half cents daily for car and
stage hire. Now for another little calculation. Three hundred days,
at three shillings a day. There it is."

And Hamilton reached a slip of paper to his friend.

"Impossible!" The latter actually started to his feet. "A hundred
and twelve dollars and fifty cents!"

"If you spend three shillings a day, you will spend that sum in a
year. Figures are inexorable."

Hoffman sat down again