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 an indispensable requisite in economy.  As early as possible in the education of children they should pass from that state of irresponsible waiting to be provided for by parents, and be trusted with the spending of some fixed allowance, that they may learn prices and values, and have some notion of what money is actually worth and what it will bring.  The simple fact of the possession of a fixed and definite income often suddenly transforms a giddy, extravagant girl into a care-taking, prudent little woman.