What an admirable manager of money was Mrs Carlyle! ‘There was,’ writes Mr Froude, ‘a discussion some years ago in the newspapers whether two people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could live together in London on three hundred pounds a year. Mrs Carlyle, who often laughed about it while it was going on, will answer the question. No one who visited the Carlyles could tell whether they were poor or rich. There were no signs of extravagance, but also none of poverty. The drawing-room arrangements were exceptionally elegant. The furniture was simple, but solid and handsome; everything was scrupulously clean; everything good of its kind; and there was an air of ease, as of a household living within its means. Mrs Carlyle was well dressed always. Her admirable taste would make the most of inexpensive materials; but the materials themselves were of the very best. Carlyle himself generally kept a horse. They travelled, they visited, they were always generous and open-handed.’ All this was done on an income of not quite four hundred pounds. Of course Carlyle, as well as his wife, was imbued with Scotch thrift, showing itself in hatred of waste. If he saw a crust of bread on the roadway, he would stop to pick it up, and put it on a step or a railing. ‘Some poor creature might be glad of it, or at worst a dog or a sparrow. To destroy wholesome food is a sin.’ The thrifty wife of Benjamin Franklin felt it a gala day indeed when, by long accumulated small savings, she was able to surprise her husband one morning with a china cup and a silver spoon from which to take his breakfast. Franklin was shocked. ‘You see how luxury creeps into families in spite of principles,’ he said. When his meal was over, he went to the store and rolled home a wheelbarrow full of papers through the streets with his own hands, lest folk should get wind of the china cup and say he was above his business. It is a great blessing to have been trained hardily. Those who have few wants are rich. Hundreds of middle-class people are heavily handicapped in the race of life because they find it hard to do without luxuries which they can ill afford to buy, but which they would never have missed if they had not been accustomed to them in childhood. This must become every year more apparent, because the classes that have hitherto had the monopoly of education have now to compete with the working-classes trained to privation for generations.