Making Home Profitable

A BORDER OF HARDY PERENNIALS
Copyright 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911 By THE CROWELL PUBLISHING CO. —— Copyright 1912 By STURGIS & WALTON CO. —— Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1912
It is just sixteen years since misfortune brought about our emancipation. A disastrous business venture made it necessary to curtail expenses. Rent being an especially heavy item, the hunt for a cheaper habitation commenced. Toiling up and down innumerable stuffy staircases in tow of slatternly janitors revealed the fact that cheap flats were either over-crowded barracks redolent of dirty soapsuds and stale cooking, or overdecorated cubbyholes where children were tabooed. Evening after evening for two weeks I returned home weary and discouraged.
Then chance, in the shape of a poultry show, came to my relief. Instead of a cheap flat and semi-dark rooms, why not a house and garden, where we could have chickens, eggs and vegetables of our own? Friends scoffed; and even my husband, who had always joined me in planning the ideal home of our old age, as a place far from the noise and rush of the city, where we could indulge our love of flowers and animals, demurred at first, though he eventually became imbued with my enthusiasm, and told me to go ahead if I felt equal to shouldering the responsibilities which city duties would obviously prevent his sharing.
He stipulated also that transportation to and from his business in the city, and all other expenses, should come within the newly necessary curtailment of expenses, which limited rent to twenty-five dollars a month and the housekeeping allowance to twelve dollars a week; that none of our very limited capital should be risked, excepting one hundred dollars to cover expense of moving, etc., and that even this sum should be considered as a loan. To satisfy the dear man’s cautious, masculine ideas of fairness, I took twenty-four hours to consider the conditions, and then, with solemn, businesslike gravity, accepted.