ands
into all the domestic economies of the household. One of his
self-imposed tasks was to go about the house after Lester, or the
servants, turning out the gas-jets or electric-light bulbs which might
accidentally have been left burning. That was a sinful extravagance.

Again, Lester's expensive clothes, which he carelessly threw aside
after a few month's use, were a source of woe to the thrifty old
German. Moreover, he grieved over splendid shoes discarded because of
a few wrinkles in the leather or a slightly run down heel or sole.
Gerhardt was for having them repaired, but Lester answered the old
man's querulous inquiry as to what was wrong "with them shoes" by
saying that they weren't comfortable any more.

"Such extravagance!" Gerhardt complained to Jennie. "Such waste! No
good can come of anything like that, It will mean want one of these
days."

"He can't help it, papa," Jennie excused. "That's the way he was
raised."

"Ha! A fine way to be raised. These Americans, they know nothing of
economy. They ought to live in Germany awhile. Then they would know
what a dollar can do."

Lester heard something of this through Jennie, but he only smiled.
Gerhardt was amusing to him.

Another grievance was Lester's extravagant use of matches. He had
the habit of striking a match, holding it while he talked, instead of
lighting his cigar, and then throwing it away. Sometimes he would
begin to light a cigar two or three minutes before he would actually
do so, tossing aside match after match. There was a place out in one
corner of the veranda where he liked to sit of a spring or summer
evening, smoking and throwing away half-burned matches. Jennie would
sit with him, and a vast number of matches would be lit and flung out
on the lawn. At one time, while engaged in cutting the grass, Gerhardt
found, to his horror, not a handful, but literally boxes of
half-burned match-sticks lying unconsumed and decaying under the
fallen blades. He was discouraged, to say the least. He gathered up
this damning evidence in a newspaper and carried it back into the
sitting-room where Jennie was sewing.

"See here, what I find!" he demanded. "Just look at that! That man,
he has no more sense of economy than a--than a--" the right
term failed him. "He sits and smokes, and this is the way he uses
matches. Five cents a box they cost--five cents. How can a man
hope to do well and carry on like that, I like to know. Look at
them."

Jennie l