amount, for we have put the outlay on cabs at a ridiculously low figure for those who move about much and like to move easily; and we know that expenditure of the kind, though of course more restricted, is one of the strongest temptations of young men with moderate incomes, even when they have to earn them for themselves. So strong is the tendency, that we have heard men who have been rich say that to learn the petty economies was as hard as to learn a new trade, and that the only way to acquire good habits was to put themselves in training, and regularly leave their money at home. And they have found that comparative poverty never came home to them so keenly as when they hesitated to spend their shillings, and no walk ever was so wearisome as the short one undertaken to save the expense of a cab.
The worst of this form of extravagance is that there is absolutely no cure for it, except the ever-present pressure which arises from want of means. The serious expenditures of life which come up in large bills are seriously considered, and arranged for with some exercise of judgment and forethought, but the petty expenditures come up separately, and seem so very small that avoiding them makes men not pressed for money suspicious of meanness in themselves. What can the shilling signify, even if the demand for the shilling comes upon them ten times a day? We do not know that it does signify, if they will only ascertain what it is, and distinctly recognize that the money does not come of itself, but is a heavy addition, producing little, to the annual outlay. We are by no means anxious to preach strict doctrine in the matter — though there is a doctrine, and a sound one, which condemns waste — and are quite aware that a man heavily occupied may find it to his permanent interest and peace of mind not to worry himself about small outgoings, or waste on them his faculty of self-restraint, which is wanted for much more serious affairs. Equanimity is worth buying at a high price, and fretfulness over sixpences is just as injurious as fretfulness over the slight exertions which would be necessary, nine times out of ten, in order to save the money. But we want them to recognize the fact that the unnoticed expenditure, the silver waste, is a heavy item in their outlays, one to be sharply remembered when they are calculating whether they cannot live very well indeed without a business income. They will find that the change tasks them much more heavily, and, above all, much more constantly than they anticipated, that silver does lubricate the grooves of life quite as much as gold, that they will miss the means of small waste much more than the means of large expenditure. Mr. Ruskin is not going to live on £360 a year, or anything like it, though he fancies he is, and tells his friends so in print; but if he tried it, a week in London would show him that he did not know how, that a man accustomed to "a carefully restricted expenditure of £5,500 a year for thirteen years" could not learn in a twelvemonth how to reduce his silver waste within the limits of the whole income he has assigned himself. Good resolutions would hardly help him. Simplicity of life would scarcely protect him. Nothing would teach him, if he had not previously learned the lesson, except pressure, the pain which comes of feeling that one has outrun one's means. It is a nature which has to be acquired, not a new habit. Almost all women, owing to their dependence for money on others, possess it without effort; and perhaps one-third of all the men who have been bred up in poverty. They have no trouble in avoiding silver waste; their trouble is, when they are rich, not to let dread of the new but trivial extravagance make them anxious over-much — we never knew a man frugal on this point ever lose the instinct, though he might abjure the practice, of this form of frugality — but for the majority, the temptation, depend on it, is almost overwhelming, and the lesson of resistance among the very hardest that they have to learn. Some very good men, too, never learn it, and can no more break with their ruinous habit than topers can with dram-drinking. They have lost the instinct of sparing shillings till real economy is impossible to them, and all dependent on them suffer, though of course with far different feelings, as if they were gamblers, drunkards, or, given to sanguineness in investment. We know of at least one dead friend who, out of an income of £600 a year, never had but £300 a year to spend, the rest going in silver extravagance; and we doubt if there are many families in England where the members, looking round, will not recognize one man of the kind. Very often he is the best of the bunch, but he is, perhaps unconsciously, the victim of the grand Scotch sin. As the cabman said of the customer who over-paid him, "He waastes the maircies in a heathen way."
