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!"
Sweet heart, I knew it. And your husband knows no more than you
do,--although he will pretend to know, that he may look cross when the
bills come in. Read what follows; hide the "Atlantic" before he comes
home; and you will know more than he knows on the most important point
in human life. Vainly, henceforth, will he quote Greek to you, or talk
pompous nonsense about the price of Treasury certificates, if you know
at what price eggs are really cheap, and at what price they are really
dear.
Listen, and remember! Then hide the "Atlantic" away.
When I engaged in the study of Hebrew, which was at that time a
"regular" at college, (for why should I blush to own that I am in my one
hundred and tenth year?) as I toiled through the rules and exceptions in
dear old Stephen Sewall's Hebrew Grammar, I ventured to ask him, one
desperately hot June day, whether he could not tell us, were it only for
curiosity's sake, which rule would come into play in every verse, and
which would be of use only once or twice in the whole Bible. "Ah,
Carter," said the dear old fellow, (he taught his beloved language with
his own book,) "it is all of use,--all!" And so we had to take it all,
and find out as we could which rules would be constant servitors to us,
and which occasional lackeys, hired for special occasions. Just so, dear
Hero, do you stand about your housekeeping. You wall be fretting
yourself to death to economize in each one of one hundred and seven
different articles,--for so many are you and Leander to assimilate and
make your own special phosphate and carbon, as this sweet honey-year of
yours goes on. Of that fret and wear of your sweet temper, child, there
is no use at all. Listen, and you shall learn what are to be the great
constants of your expense,--what Stephen Sewall would have called the
regular verbs transitive of your being, doing, and suffering,--and how
many of the one hundred and seven are only exceptional Lamed Hhes, at
which you can guess or which you can skip, if the great central
movements of your economies go bravely on.
I do not know, of course, whether Leander is fond of coffee, and whether
you drink tea or no. I can only tell you what is in our family, and
assure you that ours is a model family. Such a model is it, that Lois
has just now counted up the one hundred and seven articles for me,--has
shown me that they all together cost us nine hundred and twenty-six
dollars and thirty-two cents in the year 1863, and how much each of them
cost. Now our family consists,--