ons to dishonest tradesmen that a
drunken man does to pickpockets. Yet I complain of the high cost of
living!

My family has never had the slightest training in practical affairs. If
we were cast away on a fertile tropical island we should be forced to
subsist on bananas and clams, and clothe ourselves with
leaves,--provided the foliage was ready made and came in regulation
sizes.

These things are vastly more important from an educational point of view
than a knowledge of the relationship of Mary Stuart to the Duke of
Guise, however interesting that may be to a reader of French history of
the sixteenth century. A knowledge of the composition of gunpowder is
more valuable than of Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot. If we know nothing
about household economies we can hardly be expected to take an interest
in the problems of the proletariat. If we are ignorant of the
fundamental data of sociology and politics we can have no real opinions
on questions affecting the welfare of the people.

The classic phrase "The public be damned!" expresses our true feeling
about the matter. We cannot become excited about the wrongs and
hardships of the working class when we do not know and do not care how
they live. One of my daughters--aged seven--once essayed a short story,
of which the heroine was an orphan child in direst want. It began:
"Corrine was starving. 'Alas! What shall we do for food?' she asked her
French nurse as they entered the carriage for their afternoon drive in
the park." I have no doubt that even to-day this same young lady
supposes that there are porcelain baths in every tenement house.

I myself have no explanation as to why I pay eighty dollars for a
business suit any my bookkeepers seems to be equally well turned out for
eighteen dollars and fifty cents. That is essentially why the people
have an honest and well-founded distrust of those enthusiastic society
ladies who rush into charity and frantically engage in the elevation of
the masses. The poor working girl is apt to know a good deal more about
her own affairs than the Fifth Avenue matron with an annual income of
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

If I were doing it all over again--and how I wish I could!--I should
insist on my girls being taught not only music and languages but
cooking, sewing, household economy and stenography. They should at least
be able to clothe and feed themselves and their children if somebody
supplied them with the materials,