It is remarkable what individual power grows out of clean living.  It is profitable also.  The mere business value of a reputation for a high quality of home life will be one of the best assets that you can accumulate.  “They are attending strictly to business and will make their mark,” said a wise old banker to a group of friends in discussing a fine type of young business man, and the equally fine type of the young American woman who was his wife.

I do not know whether that young man was borrowing money for his business from that particular bank or not, but I do know that he could borrow it if he wanted it.  And one reason why his credit was established with the money-wise old financier was the ideal home life which he and his wife were leading.

For, mark you, they were not “living beyond their means.”  That was the first thing.  That is one of the best rules you can follow.  Who has not known of the premature withering of young business men and lawyers (yes, and sometimes men not so young, alas!) who have suddenly blossomed out with houses and clothes and horses, and a lot of other things which their business or practise ought not reasonably to stand.

On the other hand, do not begin your life as a miser.  Do not let the new home proclaim by its barrenness that it is the abode of a poor young man asking sympathy and aid of his friends.  “Yes, rent a piano, by all means.  Do not economize on your wife and your home,” advised an old Methodist preacher noted for his horse-sense.  And he was right.

After all, what is the purpose and end of all your labor?  If it is not that very home, I do not know what it is.  Put on a little more steam, therefore, and earn enough extra to buy a picture.  And get a good one while you are at it.  It will not break you up to buy a really good etching.  A fine “print” is infinitely better than a poor painting.  Anything is better than a poor painting.  If she has good taste, your wife will make the walls of that new home most attractive with an astonishingly small amount of money.

It is the new home you and she are making, remember that.  Very well; you cannot make it in a flat.  “Apartments” cannot by any magic be converted into a home.  For the purposes of a home, better a separate dwelling with dry-goods box for table and camp-stools for chairs than tapestried walls, mosaic floors, and all luxuriousness in those modern structures where human beings hive.

These buildings have their indispensable uses, but home-making is not one of them.  “Apartments” are not cheaper for you and easier for her than a house to yourselves—­no, not if you got the finest apartments for nothing, not even if you were paid to live in gilded rooms.  For the making of a home is priceless.  And that cannot be done in flats or hotels or other walled and roofed herding places.  Every man would like to have a picture of “the house he was born in”; but who would choose a hotel for a birthplace?  Boniface himself would not “admire” (to use one of our Westernisms) to have you select his hostelry for that purpose.