that added the “smartness” demanded at formal affairs.  People came to those dinners in their second or third best:  but they stayed late, and laughed hilariously to the last second of their stay.

In the spring we celebrated Max’s second respectable rise in salary by dropping out of the country club.  We could do without it by that time.  At first we thought it necessary to substitute a determined tramp for the Sunday morning golf game; but we presently gave that up.  We were becoming garden enthusiasts.  And as a substitution for most of the pleasure cravings of life, gardening is to be highly recommended.  Discontent has a curious little trick of flowing out of the earthy end of a hoe.

Later that summer I found that a maid was one of the things I could do without, making the discovery in an interregnum not of my original choosing.  A charwoman came in for the heavier work, and I took over the cooking.  Almost immediately, in spite of my inexperience, the bills dropped.  I could not cook rich pastries and fancy desserts, and fell back on simple salads and fruit instead.  I dipped into the household magazines, followed on into technical articles on efficiency, substituted labor-savers wherever I could, and started my first muddled set of accounts.

    At the beginning of the new year I tried my prentice hand on a
    budget; and that was the year that we emerged from debt and began to
    save.

That was six very short years ago.  When, with three babies, the bungalow became a trifle small, we built a little country house and moved farther out.  Several people whom we liked best among that first “exclusive younger set” have moved out too, and formed the nucleus of a neighborhood group that has wonderful times on incomes no one of which touches $4000 a year.

Ours is not as much as that yet; but it is enough to leave a wide and comfortable margin all around our wants.  Max has given up his pipe for cigarettes (unmonogramed), and patronizes a good tailor for business reasons.  But in everything else our substitutions stand:  gardening for golf; picnics for roadhouse dinners; simple food, simple clothing, simple hospitality, books, a fire, and a game of chess on winter nights.

We don’t even talk about economies any more.  We like them.  But—­every Christmas there comes to me via the Christmas tree a box of stockings, and for Max a box of socks—­heavy silk.  There never is any card in either box; but I think we’ll probably get them till we die.

The following short confession, signed “Mrs. M.F.E.,” was awarded the first prize by the American Magazine in a contest for articles on “The Best Thing Experience Has Taught Me”: 

    Forty Years Bartered for What?

    A tiny bit of wisdom, but as vital as protoplasm.  I know, for I
    bartered forty precious years of wifehood and motherhood to learn
    it.