However the amount may be apportioned, whatever may be the charges laid upon the wife and those assumed by the husband, the necessity of strict and accurate household accounts should be insisted upon. I am not advocating any special system. I have known excellent outlines of domestic expenses which simply darkened counsel with words for some housekeepers and rendered the business of following their outlay confusion worse confounded. Sometimes a woman with little more than a common-school education and an ordinary working knowledge of arithmetic can keep her accounts with a conciseness and cleanness many a trained bookkeeper might envy. If a housekeeper has a system which proves satisfactory it is a mistake for her to try to change it for one which may be more scientific but is less useful. Merely as a suggested guide I would advise the beginner to provide herself with two books, one small and cheap, to be slipped into the pocket when going to market, the other larger and of better quality. In the first one, to which is attached a pencil, is to be set down every purchase and its cost, as soon as made. The memory should never be trusted in these matters, but each outlay--no matter how small, if it be nothing more than a car-fare or a three-cent bunch of parsley--entered immediately. Then these items are to be transferred in ink to the larger book as soon as possible after the housekeeper’s return to the home. It is fatal to accuracy and to really helpful bookkeeping to let the accounts accumulate before they are written down and balanced. Still keeping along the most elementary principles of household accounts, let me counsel that on the left-hand page be written the amount of money in hand, while the sums expended and the items for which they are paid out are set down on the opposite page. The two pages may be balanced each day or as the bottom of each page is reached, as best suits the housekeeper. The one immutable rule is that the sum which the written balance shows ought to be in her purse should absolutely be there. This may sound like the very primer of household expenses, but no woman who has ever gone through the anguish of trying to determine what has become of the stray dime her figures show should be in her possession, or of discovering how she happens to have a quarter more than her ciphering proves to belong to her, will ever make light of the endeavor to square her accounts and her cash balance. Such struggles are avoided by the consistent practice of noting down each payment as soon as made. Possibly the most important decision the young housekeeper has to make in beginning her domestic bookkeeping is how she shall pay for her purchases. Shall it be cash or credit? And if the latter, how often shall bills be paid?