“I would rather have one-half the amount of money of which I might otherwise have the use, and have it in the form of an allowance,” said a young woman who was discussing, with other young women, the subject of expenditures. “If I know what I am to have, I can spend it to much better advantage. I can exercise some method in my purchases. If I don’t know, I am likely to spend a large sum on some two or three articles with the hope that more is coming. Suddenly and unexpectedly father sets his foot down on further bills, and there I am with a dream of a hat but no shoes, or with a ball gown and not a coat to my back.”
LEARNING HOW TO SPEND
Money plays some part in the life of every human being belonging to a civilized nation. The question of successful and skilful expenditure is a vital question for the majority of people. It is not a question that can be solved without training. Yet we educate children in various unimportant matters, and, for the most part, leave this of money untouched. In no way can a child or a young person be taught so readily and so quickly the proper use of money as by limiting his expenses to a certain sum, which sum he nevertheless controls.
CHAPTER XLII
A FEW OF THE LITTLE THINGS THAT ARE BIG THINGS
SEEING the prevalence of rudeness in human intercourse, one is forced to believe that the natural man is a cross-grained brute. That breeding and culture often convert him into a creature of gentleness and refinement speaks volumes for the powers of such influence. The average man seems to take a savage delight in occasionally giving vent to brutal or cutting speech. To yield thus to a primal and savage instinct is to prove that breeding and refinement are lacking.
There are certain business men who, during business hours, meet one with a brusk manner that would not be pardoned in a petty tradesman. If we visit them on their own business,—not as intruders,—it is the same. They seem to feel that a certain disagreeable humor is an indispensable accompaniment to the occasion. Such insolence is usually taken as a matter of course by the recipient, who immediately feels penitent at the thought of his intrusion.
Too often the physician who is not a gentleman at heart trades on the fact that his patients regard him as a necessity, and is as disagreeable as his temper at the moment demands that he shall be. He intimates that he is so busy that he has scarcely time to give his advice; that the person he attends had no business to get ill, and, in fact, makes himself generally so disagreeable it is to be wondered at that the sufferer ever calls in this man again. Yet in a drawing-room, and talking to a well person, this man’s manner would be charming. One sometimes feels that sick people and physicians might well be classed as “patients” and “impatients.”