"Why should a young, brainy man like you," continued Letitia, beaming fondly upon me, "worry himself about what might happen in the distant future? It seems so—so—little, doesn't it, dear? It is so like the little Brooklyn clerks whom you see trundling baby-carriages and rushing away to savings banks with a five-dollar bill. It is really unworthy of the author of Lives of Great Men. The thrifty always seem to me so namby-pamby."
"You are overthrowing the doctrines of domestic economy, Letitia," I said with a smile.
"Well, let's do it, Archie. If we can be comfortable, we might as well overthrow things. Oh, I suppose thrift is all right. 'A penny saved'—and all that sort of thing! Let's have a culinary student in the kitchen, and pay her a handsome salary. We shall be happy, and when we are happy, we prosper. That is surely so. We send forth radiant thoughts, and they all work for us. I believe in that. Oh, won't it be fun, Archie?"
There seemed to be logic in this idea. What's the use of saving and being uncomfortable to-day, when we may die to-morrow? We might better invest our money in the certainty of a blissful present, than hoard it in the uncertainty of the future. So we carefully knocked down the elaborate maxims of the "institutions for savings," and felt relieved.
"It is absurd," said Letitia, as she dipped the tips of her fingers into a rosy finger-bowl, "all this business of economy. Suppose you were incapacitated, Archie, do you imagine that I am quite helpless? I could teach Latin, and there must be hundreds of girls just crazy to read Ovid in the original. Or, I could learn typewriting, or bookkeeping, or other ugly but profitable accomplishments. We should never starve. I could even go on the stage, if everything else failed."
"Only if everything else failed, my dear," I suggested.
"Oh, of course; as the very last thing. So many girls do it. If they are too silly to teach, or too unsympathetic to get married, or too lazy to learn anything, they go on the stage, and get lovely salaries. I shouldn't select the life of an actress, but if—"
"We won't discuss such possibilities," I said firmly. "It is unnecessary to do so. My Lives of Great Men is nearly finished. It is the sort of book that every home will be obliged to store. There are seventy million people in the United States. Let us put down seven million homes, at a low estimate, and there you are with seven million books yielding us a royalty—not including the sales in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The prospect is really alluring."
"So it is, Archie," she assented jubilantly, "and here we are, discussing saving, like Sarah Jane and her young man. It is very narrow of us. I forgot your book. And yet literature is most profitable, and such a necessity! The other day, down-town, I saw the complete works of Shakespeare—plays and poems—bound in leather for fifty cents."
"My book will cost five dollars," I said rather hesitantly.