=Luxuries.= What constitutes a luxury? This is a difficult question to answer. Some people think that it is a luxury to take a bath. In fact, many of the monastic orders put special virtue on foregoing the use of soap and water. An old gentleman living in a little town near Chicago who owned a great deal of the property in the town, fought every effort to put in water-works and a sewer system. As the climax of an impassioned speech at a public meeting in which he had denounced the extravagances of the present time, he said: “These new notions of our young people are going to ruin us. My daughter made such a fuss that nine years ago I put a bathtub in our house, but I never use it and I guess I am about as healthy as any man in town.” One of the religious sects forbids its members the use of buttons on their clothes, as they are regarded as useless luxuries. They fasten their clothes together with hooks and eyes. Cutting the hair, shaving the beard, wearing gold and silver, adorning the person in any way, all of these things are considered luxuries by some persons. Luxury is really a thing that we can get along without. But at best it is a relative term, for what one person would consider a luxury another would consider a necessity. =Growth by Wants, Not Needs.= A merchant in Memphis had a carload of supplies arrive early one Saturday morning. He was very anxious to get the goods unloaded so that he could release the car. He started out to get help, but every Negro on the street had some good excuse why he could not help. Meeting an old fellow on the corner he said to him, “Look here, Bob, what is the trouble with all these Negroes? Not one of them wants to work and yet they all seem to have plenty of time and nothing to do.” “It’s just like this, Boss,” replied old Bob. “All the worth-while niggers is out working, ’cause you see they’s got to support their Fords. These here fellers ain’t no good; don’t want cyars and won’t work nohow when the sun shines on both sides of the street at de same time.” In this statement we have summed up the philosophy of all workers. It is only when we desire something better than we have and are willing to work for the thing desired that we begin to advance. Luxuries are the things that are not essential for mere existence, but they are the things that are of infinite value in enriching and adding to the meaning of life.