tables in which I arranged the items of my expenditure
under two heads, viz. the expenditure that was inevitable, and the
expenditure that was evitable, because it was the result of town life.
I shall best explain by giving a sample of these tables:--

TABLE I.

INEVITABLE EXPENDITURE. L. s. d.

Food and general household expenses,
calculated at 30s. per week . . . . . 78 0 0
Books, magazines, and papers . . . . . . 5 0 0
Clothes for two adults and two children . 20 0 0
Insurances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 0 0
Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 0 0
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 0 0
Sundries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 0 0
Rent, rates, and taxes . . . . . . . . . 65 0 0
----------
L268 0 0

TABLE II.

EVITABLE EXPENDITURE.

If I adopted a country life. L. s. d.

Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 0 0
By saving on rent, rates, and taxes,
calculating my cottage cost me not
more than L20 per annum . . . . . . . 45 0 0
By saving in food . . . . . . . . . . . 20 0 0
----------
L95 0 0

It will be seen that I allowed no reduction in clothes and books, for I
did not wish my children to be dressed as beggars, or to be ignorant of
current literature.

It does not need the eye of a chartered accountant to perceive that
whatever may be said for Table II., Table I. is not satisfactory. In
it I accounted for only 268 pounds, whereas I have already stated my
total income was 320 pounds. What became of the 52 pounds which found
no record in my ingenuous schedule? I could not tell, but I was pretty
sure that it was absorbed in the petty wastefulness of town life.
Londoners are so accustomed to constant daily expenditure in small
ways, that it occurs to no one to ascertain how considerable an
encroachment this aggregate expenditure is upon the total yearly
income. In all but very fine weather I must needs use some means of
public conveyance every day; there was a daily lunch to be provided;
and when work kept me late at the office there was tea as well. One
can lunch comfortably on a shilling or eighteenpence a day; and I knew
places where I could have l