We were married within a month of our commencement, after three years of courtship at a big Middle West university.  Looking back, it seems to me that rich, tumultuous college life of ours was wholly pagan.  All about us was the free-handed atmosphere of “easy money,” and in our “crowd” a tacit implication that a good time was one of the primary necessities of life.  Such were our ideas when we married on a salary of one hundred dollars a month.  We took letters of introduction to some of the “smart” people in a suburb near Chicago, and they proved so delightfully cordial that we settled down among them without stopping to consider the discrepancies between their ways and our income.  We were put up at a small country club—­a simple affair enough, comparatively speaking—­that demanded six weeks’ salary in initial dues and much more in actual subsequent expense.  “Everybody” went out for Saturday golf and stayed for dinner and dancing.

By fall there was in working operation a dinner club of the “younger married set,” as our local column in the city papers called us; an afternoon bridge club; and a small theater club that went into town every fortnight for dinner and a show.  Costly little amusements, but hardly more than were due charming young people of our opportunities and tastes.  I think that was our attitude, although we did not admit it.  In September we rented a “smart” little apartment.  We had planned to furnish it by means of several generous checks which were family contributions to our array of wedding gifts.  What we did was to buy the furniture on the instalment plan, agreeing to pay twenty dollars a month till the bill was settled, and we put the furniture money into running expenses.

It was the beginning of a custom.  They gave most generously, that older generation.  Visiting us, Max’s mother would slip a bill into my always empty purse when we went shopping; or mine would drop a gold piece into my top bureau drawer for me to find after she had gone.  And there were always checks for birthdays.

Everything went into running expenses; yet, in spite of it, our expenses ran quite away.  Max said I was “too valuable a woman to put into the kitchen,” so we hired a maid, good-humoredly giving her carte blanche on the grocery and meat market.  Our bills, for all our dining out, were enormous.  There were clothes, too.  Max delighted in silk socks and tailored shirts, and he ordered his monogramed cigarettes by the thousand.  My own taste ran to expensive little hats.

It is hardly necessary to recount the details.  We had our first tremendous quarrel at the end of six months, when, in spite of our furniture money and our birthday checks, we found ourselves two hundred and fifty dollars in debt.  But as we cooled we decided that there was nothing we could do without; we could only be “more careful.”

Every month we reached that same conclusion.