That marriage means much more than this is gradually borne in upon the butterfly, who either sobers down in the course of years, and becomes faded and worn and peevish; or else, impatient of control, she breaks all bounds, and the whole family is disgraced by an _esclandre_ that is as terrible as it is preventible. With such women as this we have nothing to do; but many of these poor creatures would have been saved had they been brought up properly, so I trust, after all, my words on the subject of common-sense housekeeping will not be considered out of place. Though they are certainly a little discursive, still they have to do with money emphatically, and that was the first part of the subject I proposed to treat of in this chapter, so before I leave it let me say just a few words on the best system of keeping accounts, a most necessary portion of any woman’s business as mistress of a household. The best authority I know on the subject of accounts is a personal friend who began housekeeping many years ago on a very small and uncertain income. Her husband was a literary man, and had of course that most tiresome and extravagance-encouraging income--a fluctuating one; yet she told me only the other day she could tell to a sixpence what she had spent ever since she was married; that at the end of the year she always sat down, first with her husband, then with her grown-up daughters, and carefully went over each month’s expenditure, and in this way she was enabled to manage well, for a glance would show her, if she had spent too much, where she could retrench, or where, if the income had increased, she could best ‘launch out’ in order to insure more comforts and less forethought and worry: in consequence of her arrangements she was always beforehand with the world, and never owed a sixpence she could not pay. A young housekeeper is often bewildered between account books. She buys one, of course, and then is bothered by detail, or begins to find ‘sundries’ a most convenient entry--and so, alas! it is. But our model housekeeper shrinks from sundries, or any of these somewhat mean subterfuges, and boldly discovers how she has spent her money, although I must confess I myself am such a bad hand at this sort of thing that, could I be seen, I feel convinced I should be found to be blushing violently at giving advice which I far too often do not follow; indeed, I always feel inclined to imitate the old woman-servant whose balance sheet consisted of so many ‘foggets,’ among other items, that her master (of course he was a bachelor), confused with the idea of having so much firewood, begged her for an explanation, when she remarked, ‘’Taint faggots, master; _’tis forgets_.’ Fortunately her honesty had been tried by many a long year’s service, or she might have got into serious trouble; and I think when we too have ‘forgets’ we are not unlikely to get into trouble when at last we have to face boldly a day of reckoning, which must come sooner or later.