for the woman whose income is ten thousand
it may be no extravagance at all. The poor clergyman's wife, when she
gives five dollars for a bonnet, may be giving as much, in proportion to
her income, as the woman who gives fifty. Now the difficulty with the
greater part of women is, that the men who make the money and hold it
give them no kind of standard by which to measure their expenses. Most
women and girls are in this matter entirely at sea, without chart or
compass. They don't know in the least what they have to spend. Husbands
and fathers often pride themselves about not saying a word on
business-matters to their wives and daughters. They don't wish them to
understand them, or to inquire into them, or to make remarks or
suggestions concerning them. 'I want you to have everything that is
suitable and proper,' says Jones to his wife, 'but don't be
extravagant.'

"'But, my dear,' says Mrs. Jones, 'what is suitable and proper depends
very much on our means; if you could allow me any specific sum for dress
and housekeeping, I could tell better.'

"'Nonsense, Susan! I can't do that,--it's too much trouble. Get what you
need, and avoid foolish extravagances; that's all I ask.'

"By-and-by Mrs. Jones's bills are sent in, in an evil hour, when Jones
has heavy notes to meet, and then comes a domestic storm.

"'I shall just be ruined, Madam, if that's the way you are going on. I
can't afford to dress you and the girls in the style you have set
up;--look at this milliner's bill!'

"'I assure you,' says Mrs. Jones, 'we haven't got any more than the
Stebbinses,--nor so much.'

"'Don't you know that the Stebbinses are worth five times as much as
ever I was?'

"No, Mrs. Jones did not know it;--how should she, when her husband makes
it a rule never to speak of his business to her, and she has not the
remotest idea of his income?

"Thus multitudes of good conscientious women and girls are extravagant
from pure ignorance. The male provider allows bills to be run up in his
name, and they have no earthly means of judging whether they are
spending too much or too little, except the semi-annual hurricane which
attends the coming in of these bills.

"The first essential in the practice of economy is a knowledge of one's
income, and the man who refuses to accord to his wife and children this
information has never any right to accuse them of extravagance, because
he himself deprives them of that standard of comparison which is a