Those poor servants!
And who shall say that conscience is perfectly developed in the woman who keeps her coachman and footman waiting for hours in the cold of a winter’s night while she is warmly housed and indifferent? Or in her whose maid has to sit up for her till the small hours, and yet has to fetch her her cup of tea bright and early the next morning? And what shall be said of her who goes to her dressmaker and orders a gown at the very last moment? Where is her social conscience? Does she not know that weary girls who have worked hard all day must be kept late to complete her dress? Does she know? Does she care? And tradespeople!And what of her who omits to pay her milliner, her dressmaker, her florist, and all others who supply her with the luxuries of life? Her conscience must be of the most diminutive order. In things great and small the lack of social conscience shows itself. The unpunctual woman.As compared with a few particulars I have mentioned, the want of punctuality is a trifle, but it is sometimes productive of the most aggravating effects. And there are women who almost appear to take pains to be unpunctual, so invariably are they just too late for everything. What they cost their housemates in time and temper can never be computed. They are themselves serene. “I’m the most unpunctual of human beings,” one such will be heard to say. She keeps people fuming on a platform watching train after train start for Henley, Ascot, Sandown, or Hurlingham, and comes up smiling and saying, “I’m afraid all you dear people are very cross with me.” At mealtimes she is equally exasperating, but she never seems to be aware that her consistent unpunctuality makes her a terrible trial to all her acquaintances. She is destitute of social conscience. And I might cite a hundred other instances of this destitution were it necessary!
OUR DEBTS.
“If there were no credit system!”
It would be a lovely world if there were no credit system. Think of the millstones some of us hang round our necks in the shape of debts, all on account of this temptation. In one of Mr. Howell’s books, he makes the father of a family say to his children: “Don’t spend money if you haven’t got any.” The advice seems superfluous, and would be so if we had to pay ready money for everything we buy. But it is, in existing circumstances, only too easy to spend money that we have not got; from the dealings in the Stock Exchange down to the fishmonger’s round the corner.
Two points of view.
There are two ways of looking at the matter—one from the purchaser’s point of view, the other from the seller’s. I intend to take the purchaser’s first, having long thought the credit system highly demoralising to many who might have thriven and prospered bravely had not its insinuating temptations been thrown in their way. It is so fatally easy to order a quantity of nice things, “Facilis est descensus.”to be paid for in a nebulous future, which always seem a long way off. And then, when the grip of it all begins to be felt, we are afraid not to go on ordering, lest our creditor should be offended and dun us for his “little account.” And so we get deeper and deeper in debt, and soon begin to lose our footing in the financial whirlpool. Oh, the misery of it! The long, sleepless nights of worry and despair, the irritable frame of mind thereby engendered, the loss of self-respect, the inability to make the most of our income while in debt, and the consequent hopelessness of ever extricating ourselves—all, all might be avoided if we were forced to pay on the spot for every purchase.
That the credit system has its advantages is more than possible; but I am not looking for them just at this moment. I want to sketch a gloomy picture, with the hope of inducing all who look upon it to abandon the habit of running long accounts, with its often ruinous results. The young wife’s initial error.The inexperienced young wife, unaccustomed to deal with large sums of money, often cripples her hard-working husband by falling most unconsciously into the snares of the system as it exists. In her desire to have everything comfortable, inviting, and agreeable for him in the home in his hours of leisure, she launches out in “ordering” all that she thinks would aid her in this unquestionably excellent object. Money always promises to do a great deal more than it ever actually accomplishes. An odious characteristic.It is one of its most odious characteristics, and the novice never dreams but that the incoming sums will cover all her outlay. Then comes the tug-of-war, and if she has no moral courage she struggles on without laying the whole matter before her husband, and is soon in a network of difficulties. He has to know, soon or late, and the resultant rift within the lute is by no means little. It is a very bad start! And when the wife would like to dress her little ones daintily and prettily, she finds herself unable to spend upon them anything beyond what may pay for absolute necessaries. If her punishment had not begun before, it very certainly commences then.