Evitable expenditure.

If I adopted a country life.  L. s. d.

Holidays  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30  0   0
By saving on rent, rates, and taxes,
calculating my cottage cost me not
more than L20 per annum   . . . . . . .  45  0   0
By saving in food   . . . . . . . . . . .  20  0   0
----------
L95  0   0

It will be seen that I allowed no reduction in clothes and books, for I did not wish my children to be dressed as beggars, or to be ignorant of current literature.

It does not need the eye of a chartered accountant to perceive that whatever may be said for Table II., Table I. is not satisfactory.  In it I accounted for only 268 pounds, whereas I have already stated my total income was 320 pounds.  What became of the 52 pounds which found no record in my ingenuous schedule?  I could not tell, but I was pretty sure that it was absorbed in the petty wastefulness of town life.  Londoners are so accustomed to constant daily expenditure in small ways, that it occurs to no one to ascertain how considerable an encroachment this aggregate expenditure is upon the total yearly income.  In all but very fine weather I must needs use some means of public conveyance every day; there was a daily lunch to be provided; and when work kept me late at the office there was tea as well.  One can lunch comfortably on a shilling or eighteenpence a day; and I knew places where I could have lunched for much less, but they were in parts of the town which I could not reach in the brief time at my disposal.  Moreover, one must needs be the slave of etiquette even though he be a clerk, and if all the staff of an office frequent a certain restaurant, one must perforce fall into line with them under penalty of social ostracism.  Thus, whether I liked it or not, for five days in the week I had to spend eighteenpence a day for lunch, and fourpence for teas; and if we add those small gratuities which the poorest men take it as a point of honour to observe, here was an annual expenditure of 25 pounds.  Taking one thing with another 5 pounds might be added for ’bus and railway fares; so that only 22 pounds is left to be accounted for.  And now, if we return to Table II., it is obvious that my income of 320 pounds per annum was only nominal, because a very great part of it was really spent in keeping up a position which a town life imposed upon me.  Before I touched a single penny of my nominal income of 250 pounds per annum, I had paid 30 pounds per year in the daily expenses inevitable to my position, and 65 pounds for rent and taxes, which was quite 45 pounds more than I ought to pay.  Education comes also to be considered at this point.  My two children went to a very respectable school at the cost of a little more than 15 pounds per annum each.  No doubt I might have sent them to a Board school, where they would have received a better education; but in the part of London where I lived there was no Board