New-York tribune., 1906-07-26
EkTRAVAeANT ECONOMY.

Have you ever thought" asked the woman
who is fond Of philosophizing. what curious
anachronisms of our small economies are?'
"EcOnomies?' returned the other woman, eau
tiousy. My husband says 1 don't know what
the word means"
AS TO most things you don't" said the philo-
sophie one which makes it the more astOnish-
ing that you should be spending five minutes
carefully and painfully untying the knots IN Iue
string around that package. When you seC a., :.
of you'll put IL away in box which is an eauS ;
full OF similar bits of string, wound up INTO IlhS
balls; and when you want string you go WIN "a
sense of pride TO that box and proDaDly uGt %t
IND piece long enough for your purpose tet
for five cents you buy ball OF eXceuenL
twine Don't mind my remarks. We all nave
those inconsistent little StreakS OF saving ha5
husband, now, has a mania for economlzlng IN
matches. Every evening he does WHO race
trying TO light all the gas jets in the house with
one match What he really does is to burn his
fingers, tear a rug two, generally, by trip
ping over them, and let lot of gas escape,
while the match goes out On his last blrtn0ay
gave him bundle OF burned matches by way
of delicate bit of irony; but do you think he
the irony? Not at all. He treasures those
matches as the apple of his eye, and uses them
one at time: grudgingly, to light one gas jet
from another"
''I suppose it is funny" admitted the other
woman. II really can't tell, now 1 think Of 1t,
why 1 feel the way l do about pieces of string.
ANY more than you know why you have
verrhiform appendix said the philOsophic one.
Its just another OF those useless survivals from
past age When tWine wasn't as cheap as Il is
now your ancestors had to be saving of 1t, and
the instinct still lives in you. My beloved econ
omy now-which like all of them, isn't an
economy at all, because it makes me waste more
time than the thing is wOrth-is buttons. l
spend hours cutting off buttons from my worm
out garments. buttons that from many launder-
ings are probably brittle and won't last fort
night on the new garment to which make haste
to apply them; when you buy nice
pearl buttons for almost nothing dozen. Thread
is another idiotic economy to which some women
are prOne-saving bits OF basting thread two
inches long"
But those economies merely waste time" re-
marked the other woman There are some
now you've spoken of it they occur to me-
which are disgusting. I occasionally lunch in
formally with family where the grandmother
has perfect passion. for saving butter. Toward
the end Of the meal l see her casting calculat-
ing eye at the fragments left the individual
plates, and before the maid has time to remove
them she reaches out and gathers them in and
makes the fragments ipto little pat, giving
audible instructions to the maid to save that
for cooking OF course one knows that in some
houses butter left at table is used in the kitchen
but one does object to having it brought to
ones attention while eating"
Yes and another economy I hate Is the habit
OF saving in ice" said the philosophic woman.
There's a type of housewife who will buy a
ave-cent piece of ice when she ought to know
that her refrigerator requires a 15-cent one and
then wonders why her leftover food and her
meat and milk keep spelling on her hands. It's
runny"