The Iron Horse

by R. M. Ballantyne

Chapter Nine.

Concerning Domestic Economy and Difficulties—Surprises and Explanations.

How to “make the two ends meet,” is a question that has engaged the attention and taxed the brains of hundreds and thousands of human beings from time immemorial, and which will doubtless afford them free scope for exercise to the end of time.

This condition of things would appear to arise from a misconception on the part of those who are thus exercised as to the necessities of life. They seem to imagine, as a rule, that if their income should happen to be, say three hundred pounds a year, it is absolutely impossible by any effort of ingenuity for them to live on less than two hundred and ninety-nine pounds nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three farthing. They therefore attempt to regulate their expenditure accordingly, and rather plume themselves than otherwise on the fact that they are firmly resolved to save and lay bye the farthing. They fail in this attempt as a matter of course, and hence the difficulty of making the two ends meet. If these unfortunates had been bred to the profession of engineering or “contracting,” they would have known that it is what we may style a law of human nature to under-estimate probable expenses. So thoroughly is this understood by the men of the professions above referred to, that, after they have formed an estimate,—set down every imaginable expense, and racked their brains in order to make sure that they have provided for every conceivable and inconceivable item, they coolly add to the amount a pretty large sum as a “margin” to cover unexpected and unthought-of contingencies. But anything of this sort never seems to enter into the calculations of the people who are so much tormented with those obstinate “two ends” that won’t meet. There is one sure and easy mode of escape for them, but they invariably hold that mode to be ridiculous, until in dire extremity they are forced to adopt it. This is simply to make one’s calculations for living considerably within one’s income!

We make no apology for going into the minutiae of this remarkable phase of human existence, because it is necessary, in order to the correct appreciation of the circumstances and feelings of good little Mrs Tipps, when, several weeks after the accident described in a previous chapter, she sat down in her little parlour to reconsider the subject of her annual expenditure.

Netta sat beside her looking somewhat pale, for she had not quite recovered from the effects of her recent illness.

“My darling,” said Mrs Tipps, “how can you charge me with having made an error somewhere? Have I not got it all down here on black and white, as your dear father used to say? This is the identical paper on which I made my calculations last year, and I have gone over them all and found them perfectly correct. Look there.”

Mrs Tipps held up in triumph, as if it were an incontestable evidence of the rectitude of her calculations, a sheet of note-paper so blotted and bespattered with figures, that it would have depressed the heart even of an accountant, because, besides the strong probability that it was intrinsically wrong, it was altogether illegible.

“Dear mamma,” remonstrated Netta, with a twinkle of her eye, “I do not call in question the correctness of your calculations, but I suggest that there may perhaps be an error of some sort somewhere. At all events the result would seem to indicate—to imply—that—that everything was not quite right, you know.”

“Quite true, darling,” replied Mrs Tipps, who was a candid though obtuse soul; “the result is unsatisfactory, eminently so; yet I cannot charge myself with careless omissions. See—here it is; on one side are my receipts. Your dear father always impressed it so earnestly on me that I should keep the receipts of money on one side of the accounts, and the payments on the other. I never could remember, by the way, on which side to put the receipts, and on which the payments, until he hit on the idea of making me contradict myself, and then I should be sure to keep right. He used to say (how well I remember it), ‘Now, darling, this is the way: Whenever you receive a sum of money to enter in your cash-book, always say to yourself, What side shall I put it on? If your mind suggests on the right, at once say No—because that would be wrong—right being wrong in this case,’ and he did use to laugh so over that little pleasantry.”