Her allowance is her own; she begins to plan upon it,—­to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and do numberless sums in her little head.  She no longer buys everything she fancies; she deliberates, weighs, compares.  And now there is room for self-denial and generosity to come in.  She can do without this article; she can furbish up some older possession to do duty a little longer, and give this money to some friend poorer than she; and ten to one the girl whose bills last year were four or five hundred finds herself bringing through this year creditably on a hundred and fifty.  To be sure, she goes without numerous things which she used to have.  From the stand-point of a fixed income she sees that these are impossible, and no more wants them than the green cheese of the moon.  She learns to make her own taste and skill take the place of expensive purchases.  She refits her hats and bonnets, retrims her dresses, and in a thousand busy, earnest, happy little ways, sets herself to make the most of her small income.

“So the woman who has her definite allowance for housekeeping finds at once a hundred questions set at rest.  Before, it was not clear to her why she should not ‘go and do likewise’ in relation to every purchase made by her next neighbor.  Now, there is a clear logic of proportion.  Certain things are evidently not to be thought of, though next neighbors do have them; and we must resign ourselves to find some other way of living.”

“My dear,” said my wife, “I think there is a peculiar temptation in a life organized as ours is in America.  There are here no settled classes, with similar ratios of income.  Mixed together in the same society, going to the same parties, and blended in daily neighborly intercourse, are families of the most opposite extremes in point of fortune.  In England there is a very well understood expression, that people should not dress or live above their station; in America none will admit that they have any particular station, or that they can live above it.  The principle of democratic equality unites in society people of the most diverse positions and means.

“Here, for instance, is a family like Dr. Selden’s, an old and highly respected one, with an income of only two or three thousand,—­yet they are people universally sought for in society, and mingle in all the intercourse of life with merchant-millionnaires whose incomes are from ten to thirty thousand.  Their sons and daughters go to the same schools, the same parties, and are thus constantly meeting upon terms of social equality.

“Now it seems to me that our danger does not lie in the great and evident expenses of our richer friends.  We do not expect to have pineries, graperies, equipages, horses, diamonds,—­we say openly and of course that we do not.  Still, our expenses are constantly increased by the proximity of these things, unless we understand ourselves better than most people do.  We don’t, of course, expect