Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 301, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1917 — According to Budget [ARTICLE]

According to Budget

By Jane Osborn

(Copyright, 1917, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) When Morton Blake, who had been married a year and was supremely happy in his snug little apartment with his blue-eyed little wife, seated himself in his favorite easy chair wi.th a volume of his favorite author and his favorite pipe, preparatory to enjoying for the evening all the happiness of bachelor life rolled into one with the contentment of married life, there was blue-eyed Pegg on the other sldk of the table with a flat, oblong book thit had a new look to It. Peggy opened it with care and pressed the covers back as one does with a book that has never been opened before. It was the budget book. “Angelica has been here today,’* Peggy announced, “and she brought this —it’s such a wonderful idea! Morton, did you ever hear of a budget? I never had, but Angelica explained what it means and here is the book. She has made a special study of housekeeping, you know.” “But what does Angelica know about making men happy in their homes?” queried Morton, who had not an altogether pleasant mental image of Peggy’s tall, angular, many-degreed cousin, who seemed to be so fond of putting ideas into Peggy’s head as Peggy was of sponging them “What does she know about real home making?”

“Oh, she knows a great deal,” insisted Peggy. “And she says that the reason why so many people aren’t happy is because the wives aren’t busi-ness-like and don’t apply the same methods to housekeeping that men do to their businesses. Angelica would make some man wonderfully happy.” “Did she tell you that, too?” asked Morton, puffing on his pipe viciously. “Yes, only, of course, she is so busy telling other women how to make their homes happy that she doesn’t have time. Well, she brought me this budget book and I am to put down in these little columns just what I spend each day —see, here’s a place for bread and one for butter and another for meat and fish, and all the things we eat, and here’s one for ice and one for help and carfare and light and things like that —Angelica says you call those last ones operating expenses. It is the first of the month, so I started i;ight in. See, I bought some face powder at the drug store and I put that down under medicine, and the two, dollars for the laundress —that goes under help. Every time you give me anything that goes in here under receipts. And every week I am to balance it both ways so I can tell at a glance just how much I am spending for every different sort of thing—and in the front of the- book there is a table telling how much we ought to spend for things and if I’m spending too much for any one thing then we’ll know it and can stop making that mistake. Angelica says she will help me balance and figure out the percentages —I never could do percentages.” “You don’t mean that Angelica is going to keep tabs on our household expenses?” gasped Morton. “Oh, you mustn’t mind that. She helps lots of young married girls—she says she is helping them to make their husbands happy and contented. That is her life work. She started doing it only for the poor people in the settlement, but she lias discovered that people comfortably off need help just as much. And so I started right away, but I can’t finish till you tell me your part cf .it. Here’s a place for ‘man’s lunch’ and another for ‘carfares,’ that you must tell me, and every day you must tell me how much you have spent for magazines or papers —that goes under ‘lmprovements,’ and if you give something to a beggar you must tell me so I can. put it down under ‘Church and Charity.’ I “Every night I will ask you so you won’t! forget anything. Angelica has been helping one young couple and they haven't been a cent out of the way since they began. The husband remembers every tinty winty tiling he spends and he is so happy just on account of it.” Morton snorted inwardly and ’had some rather sinister thoughts regarding Angelica and her missionary enterprise. “Is there a definite percentage for the amount of tobacco a husband can use?” “YesfT indeed—-but the book says that one of the things theyoung people ought to strive to do is to divert that money—those are the words the book uses —into other more worth-while channels, such as lecture courses, the purchase of an encyclopedia or a beautiful work of art. Don’t you think Angelica is doing a wonderful w’ork?” “Yes, quite wonderful, not to say remarkable, phenomenal and epochmaking,” said Morton, #nd Peggy was satisfied. Every night for a month thereafter ■ Morton was obliged to confess just how much he spent on luncheon, shoeshines, beggars and tobacco, and even had to admit that he lost a dollar on a bet one day and gained two dollars the next, though Peggy hadn't any idea where to enter these items and finally decided on putting the dollar down Un-

de- “mortgage interest” because she hadn’t anything else fdr that column, and calling the other simply “cash received.” Angelica had promised to help Peggy with the percentages and correct their budget at the end of the following month, and Morton was casting about in his mind for a way of defeating her in her purpose. One night early in the second month of their budget accounts he told his wife he had met an interesting old school friend of his who had a delightful mission in life. He was trying to help the men he knew to make their wives happy and he had worked out a system which as yet he had not had published. It was, said Morton, the theory of this man that the most yorth-while thing in life was not money. Money was incidental. One’s happiness did not depend on the amount of money one had so why take pains to conserve it? Tha things that counted vj'ere the words one spoke, the smiles and tears and sighs and laughter. It was as folk use these real things of life that they w’ere either happy or unhappy. For instance, if a man laughs qnly when his wife hits her thumb with a hammer or when he sees a cat with a tin can on the end of its tail, he is pretty sure to make himself and his associates unhappy. The woman who spends tw T o hours every morning gossiping with a neighbor about another neighbor’s divorce case is wasting her time and cheating her husband because a woman’s words belongms much to her husband as a man’s savings belong to his wife. Peggy listened intently to the explanation, and seemed enthralled. So far, was she) from suspecting Morton’s scheme that she even suggested that Angelica -./would like to meet the stranger, and went off into a very pleasant brown study aS she thought that possibly a match might be made between these two workers for humanity’s happiness —and so there ’might, had the second philanthropist been a person of flesh and blood and not a creature of Morton’s imagination. Morton gave his wife some typewritten sheets containing items and a system of horizontal and perpendicular lines not unlike Angelica's budget book and he asked her to fill In the items from day to day. He would not let her forget, he said, but would go over the sheets every evening after he had finished telling her just how much he had spent.

One of the Items of Morton’s scheme was labeled “tears” and under this poor Peggy felt in duty bound —for Morton had accounted for his lunch money to a penny —to explain the cause for every tear she shed. The tears she spent over the frost-bitten geranium plant were in a measure excusable, for death even of a plant is a suitable cause of sorrow, but when she wept over the fact that she was not invited to a certain luncheon party she was in the wrong because the sorrow in that case was prompted by jealousy or personal pique. Peggy had a hard time with the item marked “laughter” for it was Peggy’s nature to laugh a little quite frequently and everytime she stopped to think that she was laughing and that she must remember to. put it down in the list she was sobered so she stopped laughing. And it was hard sometimes to have to put down on that sheet for Morton’s eyes that she had said “darn it” because the potatoes boiled dry; still there was an item for “profanity” and Morton had decided that “darn it” was as near to profanity as Peggy ever came. One night—it was the night before Angelica’s expected visit and Mortpn had been unusually severe with Peggy over the sheets, as indeed Peggy had been with Morton because he couldn’t remember how much he tipped that day at luncheon—Peggy crumpled down over the sheets in tears. “We’re not half so happy as w r e used to be — before we began to budget everything,” she wailed. “I wish Angelio had never left the settlement and I wish your sour-hearted old friend —I know he Is sour hearted —was —was in the bottom of the ocean. And I just hate to keep accounts, I do, and I don’t -want you to tell me how much you spend.” Morton took a warm little hand from under the tear stained face and then raised the face and kissed away the tears. “Shake, Peggy,” he said. “We don’t need any one’s prescription for happiness, do we? And we are through with budgets for keeps.” “Forever,” echoed Peggy, and she meant it.