se
where two young people are starting out in life without feeling a
sympathetic interest in that home; I never pass a house where a room is
being added without feeling interested, for I know the occupants have
planned it, and looked forward to it and waited for it; I like to see a
little house moved back and a larger house built, for I know it is the
fulfilment of a dream. I have had some of these dreams myself, and I
know how they lead us on and inspire us to larger effort and greater
endeavor, and yet there is a limit to the amount one can wisely spend
even for so good a thing as a home.

If a man gets too big a house it becomes a burden to him, and some
have had this experience. Not infrequently a young couple will start
out poor and struggle along in a little house, looking forward to the
time when they can build a big house. After a while the time arrives
and they build a big house, larger, possibly, than they intended to
and it nearly always costs more than they thought it would, and then
they struggle along the rest of their lives looking back to the time
when they lived in a little house.

We speak of people being independently rich. That is a mistake; they
are dependently rich. The richer a man is the more dependent he is--the
more people he depends upon to help him collect his income, and the more
people he depends upon to help him spend his income. Sometimes a couple
will start out doing their own work--the wife doing the work inside the
house and the man outside; but they prosper, and after a while they are
able to afford help. They get a girl to help the wife inside and a man
to help the husband outside; then they prosper more--and they get two
girls to help inside and two men to help outside, then three girls
inside and three men outside. Finally they have so many girls helping
inside and so many men helping outside that they can not leave the
house--they have to stay at home and look after the establishment.
And this is not a new condition. One of the Latin poets complained of
"the cares that hover about the fretted ceilings of the rich," and it
was this condition that inspired Charles Wagner to write his little
book entitled "The Simple Life," in which he entered an eloquent
protest against the materialism which makes man the slave of his
possessions and presented an earnest plea for the raising of the
spiritual above the purely physical. I repeat, there is a limit
to the amount a man can wisely spend