The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1873-08-21
CuriOsities Of Economy.

IT is quite in the natural order of things
that some people should be habitually
economical and others habitually extrava-
CANT. Pecularities of mental and moral
constitution bring this state of things
about, and these are greatly helped some
times by circumstances. People who must
economize learn to do it whether their
tendencies are in that direction or not,
and people whose early training has
taught them thrift are apt to practice it even
after it ceases to he necessary. With all
these things we are familiar, and so we
do not think of them. But in this matter
of saving, as in almost everything else, &C.
centricity finds room to show itself very
curiously sometimes. We once knew a
gentleman whose generosity and utter un-
gancles which, even with his considera-
ble wealth, he could i'll afford. There
was no ostentation in his living, and yet
his living was enormously expensive
Whatever his family might posi-
bly, enjoy he procured. His house
was constantly filled with relatives
poorer than he. The church to which
he belonged drew nearly half its
revenue from his purse. His poor neigh
bors thought him very prince of gener-
osity; and well they might, for whenever
they were over-pressed, and needed more
laborers than they could afford to hire, he
was sure to discover the fact, and to give
them a lift with his whole farm force. To
do generous things was part of him, and
the cost of doing them never entered his
mind. He was extravagant simply because
he could never learn to regard money as of
any value. And yet this man had one habit
of economy There was just one thing
which he carefully saved, and that was
paper. When he wrote letter, he would
carefully tear off and put away whatever
remained of the sheet, even when it was a
strip only an inch wide. When he re-
ceived letter, his first care was to save
whatever blank paper there might be at
tached to it. He made no use of these
strips. When he wanted to make a men,
orandum, or write a brief receipt, he
would begin at the top of foolscap sheet,
though his desk was full of slips varying
in size from half sheet to mere scraps
1t was not in him to make any real say.
ing. His chronic extravaganza made him
take fresh sheet when scrap would
have done quite as well, and his one in
stinct of economy was fully satisfied by
the tearing off and boarding of all posi-
BILE margins.
l
uncommon one A celebrated English
author, who was not noted for economy
in any other direction, was very misel
in the matter of paper. His manuscript
was written so closely that the printer:
could hardly make anything of it, and i
was written, too, on all sorts of scraps
Margins of newspapers, old wrappers, thu
brown paper in which his shopman sen
home parcels, all these served him fol
writing paper. His printers thought tc
secure more agreeable manuscript by pro
viding him indirectly supply of COCO
paper, and so in sending his proofs to him
they wrapped them in good foolscap; bu
the paper.miser thought this altogether
too good to be used, and laid it away
while he continued to write on unseeml1
scraps.
But paper is not the only thing prizet
by special economists of this kind. W.
know wealthy man whose table is al
ways abundantly supplied with the bes
of everything with the solitary exception
of beefsteaks. He is especially fond Of
beefsteak too, but he will not allow his
serving-man to order any of the choicel
cuts for broiling. He thinks it wholly
unwarrantable extravaganza to pay two
cents pound extra for loin-steaks when
he can get on we'll enough with those cut
from the round. This would seem rea
sonable enough if it were part of sys
tenn, but the beefsteak- saving is his only
economy.
Enforced economy sometimes becomes
so far chronic as to last long after the ne
cessity for practicing it has passed away
When Lord Eldon was poor Jack Scott,
and had made a runaway marriage with
no money in hand or in prospect, his no
bic wife pinched and screwed their joint
expenses into the smallest possible com
pass, and the habit thus acquired stuck to
her even after her husband had become
Lord High Chancellor with an income
much greater than he knew how 10 use
and 1t is said that he was actually afraid
to take her into society or to invite guests
to his house lest she should mortify him
by some manifestation of her stinginess
She would neither dress herself tolerably
nor set a proper number of dishes on her
table, and her other housekeeping ar
engagements were equally pinched in theil
character. The story is commonly told
to her discredit; but when we reflect that
all this stinginess was but the result OF
her brave and loyal fight for her husbands
success in the world, we bow our heads
in recognition of her nobility far more
heartily than we render our tribute of re-
spect to the Lord Chancellor who, in the
prosperity which she had helped to
bring to him, was ashamed of her.-HeartA
and Home