I
had young children, I kept more and better servants than many women
who wore Cashmere 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 millionaire. 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