dest, and also for the more important reason that children
naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may
find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they
marry. At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within
their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of
arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them. That means some
agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that
adventure.

A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her
economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental
reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is,
if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage. That means
that the engaged couple might well start a game of "Must Haves" and
"Would Like to Haves" in the moments that can be spared from other
pursuits, a game in which without the other's knowledge each should
write the secret wishes and requirements to be later compared for
mutual enlightenment. The woman who would gladly go with two meals a
day for a fortnight in order to get a ticket for the opera or
symphony, and the man who would sacrifice a needed new suit of clothes
with pleasure for a fishing trip, may be able to compromise on
essentials, but will find it difficult in the matter of extras unless
warned beforehand. Affection bridges many chasms, and sensible people
learn that even in the best regulated families father, mother, and the
children may all get some of their best times apart. A basis of mutual
understanding is, however, essential. The necessity to get at a common
plan for the economic standards of the household is a vital one. How
many men have run in debt for what they believed essential to the
wife's happiness because she had such things in her father's house,
without letting the wife know that economy was necessary, only to find
out that if full confidence had been given a mutual effort would have
secured better results. How many women have gone without things they
might have had for want of knowledge of their husband's income and
suffered fears that need not have been in the mind. How many also,
alas, both of men and women, have lived beyond their means from
selfish demand one upon the other, a demand which might have been
chastened, at least, if full knowledge of economic resources had been
attained before the scale of living was fixed.

All these items of sugge