time country grocery store with the modern provision house and it
may help you to understand why our lean sinewy forefathers have given
place to the sallow, fat parodies of to-day. A comparison might also
help to explain something of the high cost of living. My grandfather
kept such a store and I've seen some of his old account books. About
all he had to sell in the way of food was flour, rice, potatoes, sugar
and molasses, butter, cheese and eggs. These articles weren't put up
in packages and they weren't advertised. They were sold in bulk and
all you paid for was the raw material. The catalogue of a modern
provision house makes a book. The whole object of the change it seems
to me is to fill the demand for variety. You have to pay for that. But
when you trim your ship to run before a gale you must throw overboard
just such freight. Once you do, you'll find it will have to blow
harder than it does even to-day to sink you. I am constantly surprised
at how few of the things we think we need we actually _do_ need.

The pioneer of to-day doesn't need any more than the pioneer of a
hundred years ago. To me this talk that a return to the customs of our
ancestors involves a lowering of the standard of living is all
nonsense; it means nothing but a simplifying of the standard of
living. If that's a return to barbarism then I'm glad to be a
barbarian and I'll say there never were three happier barbarians than
Ruth, the boy and myself.

CHAPTER XV

THE GANG

If I'd been making five dollars a day at this time, I wouldn't have
moved from the tenement. In the first place as far as physical comfort
went I was never better off. We had all the room we needed. During the
winter we had used the living room as a kitchen and dining room just
as our forefathers did. We economized fuel in this way and Ruth kept
the rooms spotless. We had no fires in our bedrooms and did not want
any. We all of us slept with our windows wide open. If we had had ten
more rooms we wouldn't have known what to do with them. When we had a
visitor we received him in the kitchen. Some of our neighbors took
boarders and also slept in the kitchen. I don't know as I should want
to do that but at the same time many a family lives in a one room hut
in the forest after this fashion. By outsiders it's looked upon as
rather romantic. It isn't considered a great hardship by the settlers
themselves.

Then we had the advantage of our roof and with summer coming