'Well,' I suggested; 'concerning income and expenditure.'
'I can give you a plain experience on those heads,' he said frankly, 'because I am, after a certain fashion, methodical, much more so than many of my mates. I put down my earnings every week in a little memorandum-book, and on the opposite side I put down the way in which my earnings are spent. This is a good lesson for my youngsters, who learn the value of system in the practical matters of life. You know, sir, that I have five children--two girls and three boys. The youngest is eleven months old, the eldest is ten years of age on his next birthday. Now, last year, from the first day to the last, I earned ninety-nine pounds ten shillings, and every farthing of my earnings, with the exception of thirty-eight shillings, which was spent in junketing, went in the necessaries of life and in paying my policy.'
'Once during the year we took the children to the Crystal Palace. We went once to the theatre to see a pantomime; and my eldest youngsters begged so hard to be taken to the Brighton Aquarium on one of the Bank holidays, that I could not resist them; and really I was glad of the opportunity of seeing it myself. We had a capital day, and it did the children good in many ways; it opened the eyes of their minds, I may say. Our rent makes a big hole. We pay seventeen pounds a year, including taxes, for our house, which contains three rooms and a small kitchen or washhouse--quite as little as we can do with. Meat is another big item. Then, I work three miles away from home, and that's an item. In examining the figures, which Jane and I did very carefully when I balanced the account--we have the fear of that rainy day you have mentioned very strong upon us sometimes, I assure you, sir!--we could not find one item which was not properly in its place, and which in our opinion could have been set under the head of extravagance. Yet I know that there are political economists--I call them by the name they give themselves--who would not agree with me. The money spent in amusements I have no doubt they would say I ought to have saved: I deny it. We have a right--every human being has--to a reasonable share of healthful pleasure. "Your meat bill ought to have been a little less," they would also doubtless say: I deny it. We have little enough as it is; more than half the meat we eat is Australian meat--and we like it! The children's bodies must be healthfully nourished if they are to grow into right-minded, reasonable men and women. Healthy body makes healthy mind. Twenty-two shillings a year spent in reading! "Monstrous!" the political economists would exclaim. Why, my newspapers cost me not less than eight shillings a-year, and there's a weekly publication, and an occasional oddment for the children; and is my wife, or am I, not to read a work of fiction occasionally--or are these things not for such as we? It is they who are monstrous who set up such monstrous cries. So they would go through my book, and prove that out of my earnings of ninety-nine pounds ten shillings I ought to have saved a handsome sum. I have observed that it is only among the ranks of the well-to-do that you find your political economists. They argue from the wrong end--they themselves, mind you, being seated the while on a snug and comfortable elevation; they cast up lines of figures, and judge the life of an individual by means of a monster called Aggregate--which Aggregate, I take it, is, applied to such a purpose, the most absurd and unjust standpoint that mind of man could have invented.'