ontented, or Vanderbilt, who would
consider himself ruined if he had to live on ten thousand a year?

I know that you may think that you cannot come to Harris's point of view,
as your points of view have always been horizontally opposite, he looking
up to a sum upon which you look down. But never mind. I am suggesting that
we do reach that point, nevertheless, or, if not that point, that we shall
use our intellects, and, with a view to expediency, select a point it
would be wise to reach.

I assert that we have now an intellectual problem before us. The question
is what scale of expenditure we shall use and what proportion of our
desires, etc., shall we curb.

The usual hand-to-mouth method is to go ahead, do what we want until we
are "up against it" and have to economize, and then for a while do without
some of the more important things which we find we cannot afford, having
already spent our money on things of lesser importance. This is the lazy
man's way, the one who does not care to do his thinking, and chooses to
let circumstances make his course rather than wisdom.

The system seems to have some points of merit, and it is whispered that
even Uncle Sam has sometimes let his affairs be managed on this plan, but
that need not enter into this case; for you and I are both of us
intelligent beings, observers after a fashion, and we intend to plan
things out a bit and see what we can do with them, and perhaps see what
stuff this luck that people talk about is made of.

Let us see where we now stand. We have found that it is the attitude
toward your income, and the scale of living your income permits, that must
be regulated; that your desires, if all were granted, will soon grow to a
point far out of reach of your purse, no matter how rich you get; and,
therefore, that the intellectual problem is before us of picking out a
scale of living somewhere well within your present income and endeavoring
to attain an attitude of mind toward living on that scale which will make
you happy rather than discontented.

I know that you are thinking that I have forgotten the personal equation,
that I am arguing as if all people were of the same temperament,
forgetting that under given conditions one person would be happy and
another would not, and that you, with your varied interests and contented
disposition, would always find things to make you happy, even if you had
to give up many of the luxuries which you now enjoy. This is true