he morning
and took the same old 7.42 to the same old office.

When he wanted clothes he went to the nearest decent tailor.

No such cinch for Marie. Her tailor lived in Sutherton, on the
directly opposite side of the city from the suburb in which Marie
lived. Just to get to that tailor's cost Marie an hour and a half of
effort. She had got up early, but by the time the tailor had stuck the
world's visible supply of pins into the lines of her new coat, most of
the forenoon had been arduously occupied.

Of course many forenoons had to be thus occupied. Never forget it! The
modish adaptation of woven fabrics to the female contour becomes
increasingly complex and minute and exacting and time-occupying in
precise proportion as the amount of time increases for which
occupation must be devised.

Besides, it gives employment to the tailors.

This is the really meritorious function of the leisure class. It
gives employment. And every extension of its tastes and needs gives
more employment. Marie and her friends greatly increased the number
and prosperity of tailors and milliners and candy-dippers and
perfume-manufacturers and manicurists and hairdressers and plumed-bird
hunters and florists and cab-drivers and Irish lace-makers and
Chinese silkworm tenders and violet-and-orris sachet-powder makers
and matinee heroes and French nuns who embroider underwear and
fur-traders and pearl-divers and other deserving persons, not
forgetting the multitudes of Turks who must make nougat or perish.

In fact, Marie and her friends, in the course of a year, gave as much
employment as a fair-sized earthquake. That is, in the course of a
year, they destroyed, without return, a large amount of wealth and set
many people to work replacing it. If we had a large enough leisure
class we should have no need of fires and railroad wrecks and the
other valuable events which increase our prosperity by consuming it.

Marie belonged to the real Consumers' League. And she consumed
prettily and virtuously. It wasn't bad air that suffocated her soul.
It was no air.

[Illustration: TO CURE A HEADACHE--SHIRKING-GIRL THERAPY: TAKE A DOCTOR,
A FAMILY, A NICE BRIGHT DAY, AND A BOX OF CHOCOLATES: USE THEM ALL UP.]

She thought she was breathing, however, and breathing fast. Why, it
was half past eleven before she got back downtown from her tailor, and
she bought a wedding present till one, and she was just famished and
ran to a tea room, but she had hard