I retired to my study, consulted London, Lindley, and Linnæus,—the thick Gray, the middling Gray, and the child's Gray,—Worcester's Dictionary, and Webster's, in both of which you can usually find almost anything but what should be there,—Johnson's "Dictionary of Gardening," and Gardner's "Dictionary of Farming,"—and none of these treatises mentioned the quantity of potatoes proper for planting a given space of land. Even the Worcester and Webster failed. I was reduced to tell the Kelt to ask the huckster of whom he bought. All the treatises went on the principle—true, but inadequate—that "any fool would know." Any fool might, probably does,—but I was not a fool.
The next year, having built my house and taken Lois home, the bluebirds sang spring to us one fine morning, and we went out to plant our radish-seeds. With fit forethought, the seed had been bought, the ground manured and raked, the string, the dibble, the woman's trowel, the man's trowel, the sticks for the seed-papers, and the papers were all there. Lois was charming, in her sun-bonnet; I looked knowing in my Canadian oat-straw. We marked out the bed,—as the robins, meadow-larks, and bluebirds directed. Lois then looked up article "Radish" in the "Farmer's Dictionary," and we found the lists of "Long White Naples," "White Spanish," "Black Spanish," "Long Scarlet," "White Turnip-Root," "Purple Turnip," and the rest, for two columns, which we should and should not plant. All that was nothing to us. We were to plant radish-seeds, which we had bought, as such, from Mr. Swett. How deep to plant them, how far apart or how near together, the book was to tell. But the book only said, "Everybody knows how to plant radishes."
Now this was not true. We did not know.
These two illustrations, as the minister says, are sufficient to show the character of the deficiency which I am now to supply,—which young housekeepers of intelligence feel, when they have got their nests ready and begin to bill and coo in-doors. There are many things which every fool knows, which people of sense do not know. First among these things is, "What will you have for dinner?"—a question not to be answered by detailed answers,—on the principle of the imaginary Barmacide feasts of the cook-books,—but by the results of deep principles, which underlie, indeed, the whole superficial strata of civilized life. Did not the army of the Punjaub perish, as it retreated from Ghizni to Jelalabad, not because the enemy's lances were strong, but because one day it did not dine?
I am not going to tell the old story of that "sweet pretty girl" who, after a week of legs of mutton, ordered a "leg of beef." I sympathize with her from the bottom of my heart. Her sister will be married to-morrow. To her I dedicate this paper, that she may know, not what she shall order,—that is left to her own sweet will, less fettered now that her life is rounded by her welding it upon its other half than it was when she wandered in maiden meditation fancy-free,—not, I say, what she shall order for her dinner and for Leander's, but the principle on which the order is to be given.
"But, my dear Mr. Carter," says the blushing child, as she reads, "we have got to be so dreadfully economical!"
Fairest of your sex, there was never one of your sex, since Eve finished the apple, lest any should be wasted, nor of my sex, since Adam grimly champed the parings, thinking he was "in for it," who should not be economical. A just economy is the law of a luxurious life. "Dreadful economy" is the principle which is now to be unfolded to you.
Economy in itself is one of the most agreeable of luxuries. This I need not demonstrate. Everybody knows what good fun it is to make a bargain. Economy becomes dreadful, only when some lightning-flash of truth shows us that our painful frugality has been really the most lavish waste.
So Lois and I, for nine years, lived without a corkscrew. We would buy busts and chromoliths with our money instead,—we would go to the White Mountains, we would maintain an elegant æsthetic hospitality, as they do in Paris, with the money we should save by doing without a corkscrew. So I spoiled two sets of kitchen-forks by drawing corks with them, I broke the necks of legions of bottles for which Mr. Tarr would have credited me two cents each, and many times damaged, even to the swearing-point, one of the sweetest tempers in the world,—all that we might economize on this corkscrew. But one day, at the corner-shop, I saw a corkscrew in the glass show-case, lying on some pocket-combs and family dye-stuffs. I asked the price, to learn that it cost seventeen cents. The resolution of years gave way before the temptation. I bought the corkscrew, and from that moment my income has equalled my expenses. So you see, my sweet May-bud, just trembling on the edge of housekeeping, that true economy consists in buying the right thing at the right time,—if you only pay for it as you go.
"But, my dear Mr. Carter, I don't know what the right thing is!"