crifices
one must make in the house superficially, in the consideration of a
certain class, are cheerfully borne and soon forgotten.

Little discomforts which affect only one's feelings and not one's health
make rather good stories after they are over. What is worth while? Are we
become too sensitive to little things? Do we imagine we show our higher
civilization by discerning with the little princess the pea under
twenty-four feather beds?

Let our shelter be first of all healthful, physically and morally. If to
gain these qualities we must take a house in an unfashionable
neighborhood, it should not cause distress. Why is this particular region
unfashionable? Is it not merely because certain would-be leaders choose
to live beyond their means in company with those who are able to spend
more?

Why not be honest and happy? Live within your income and make it cover the
truest kind of living.

CHAPTER VIII.

TO OWN OR TO RENT: A DIFFICULT QUESTION.

"Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for
one's own comfort and not for the comment of one's neighbors."
--Miss MULOCK.

When the ideals of an older generation are forced upon a younger, already
struggling under new and strange environment, the effect is often opposite
to that intended. The elders in their pride of knowledge, and the
real-estate promoters in their greed for gain, have been urging the young
man to own his house on penalty of shirking his plain duty. They say he
must have a home to offer his bride, as the bird has a nest. Building-loan
associations, homes on the instalment plan, appeal to the sentiments they
think the young man ought to heed.

The young man is often modest, almost always sensitive, and he prefers to
bear dispraise rather than to tell the real reason he hesitates. His ear
is closer to the ground, he feels even if he cannot express the doubt of
the disinterestedness of the land-scheme promoter, of the wisdom of his
father. He knows better than his elders the uncertainties of salaried men,
young men with a way to make in the unstable conditions of to-day.

The effect of this well-meant advice is not to hasten his marriage, but to
put it off because he is not allowed to take the course he feels safest.
Or if he is willing, the parents of his prospective bride are not, and so
young people do not marry on $1000 a year, for fear of the elder
generation and their supposed wisdom.

The young people are not ju