"Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity." Douglas Jerrold says that "the shirt of Nessus was a shirt not paid for." Those who would be happy though married must pitch their scale of living a degree below their means, rather than up to them; but this can only be done by keeping a careful account of income and expenditure. John Locke strongly advised this course: "Nothing," he said, "is likelier to keep a man within compass than having constantly before his eyes, the state of his affairs in a regular course of account." The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the moneys received and expended by him. "I make a point," he said, "of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the same. Formerly I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them, but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great surprise, dues of a year or two's standing. The fellow had speculated with my money, and left my bills unpaid." Talking of debt, his remark was, "It makes a slave of a man." Washington was as particular as Wellington was in matters of business detail. He did not disdain to scrutinize the smallest outgoings of his household, even when holding the office of President of the American Union. When Maginn, always drowned in debt, was asked what he paid for his wine, he replied that he did not know; but he believed they "put something down in a book." This "putting down in a book" has proved the ruin of a great many people. The regular weekly payment of tradesmen is not only more honest, but far more economical. I know a wife who says that she cannot afford to get into the books of tradesmen, and who prides herself upon the fact that she will never haunt her husband after her death in the shape of an unpaid bill. These principles will induce married people to always try to have a fund reserved for sickness, the necessity of a change of abode, and other contingencies. Perfect confidence as regards money matters should exist between married people. In a letter to a young lady upon her marriage, Swift says, "I think you ought to be well informed how much your husband's revenue amounts to, and be so good a computer as to keep within it that part of the management which falls to your share, and not to put yourself in the number of those polite ladies who think they gain a great point when they have teased their husbands to buy them a new equipage, a laced head, or a fine petticoat, without once considering what long score remained unpaid to the butcher."