And yet, too, important as saving is, there are so many things which we must have for the sake of this same wife and the little ones that we cannot afford to save too much. Are we to toil and moil all our days, go without fresh butter and never take six weeks in Europe or Japan because we wish to make sure that our sons and daughters will be amply provided for, as the obituary notices put it? Some men with daughters only have a craze of saving so that this one earthly life becomes a rasping, worrying ordeal, which is only too apt to find an end in the coolness of a premature grave. My friend Perkins--here is another chance, identity seekers, to wonder who Perkins really is--the father of four girls, is a thin, nervous lawyer, who ought to take a proper vacation every summer; but he rarely does, and the reason seems to be that he is saddled by the idea that to bring a girl up in luxury and leave her with anything less than five thousand dollars a year is a piece of paternal brutality. It seems to me that a father ought in the first place to remember that some girls marry. I reminded Perkins of this one day. “Some don’t,” he answered mournfully. “Marriage does not run in the female Perkins line. The chances are that two of my four will never marry. They might be able to get along, if they lived together and were careful, on seven thousand dollars a year, and I must leave them that somehow.” “Hoot toot,” said I, “that seems to me nonsense. Don’t let the spectre of decayed gentlewomen hound you into dyspepsia or Bright’s disease, but give yourself a chance and trust to your girls to look out for themselves. There are so many things for women to do now besides marry or pot jam, that a fond father ought to let his nervous system recuperate now and then.” “I suppose you mean that they might become teachers or physicians or hospital nurses or typewriters,” said Perkins. “Declined with thanks.” “Don’t you think,” I inquired with a little irritation, “that they would be happier so than in doing nothing on a fixed income, in simply being mildly cultivated and philanthropic on dividends, in moving to the sea-side in summer and back again in the autumn, and in dying at the last of some fashionable ailment?” “No, I don’t,” said Perkins. “Do you?” Were I to repeat my answer to this inquiry I should be inviting a discussion on woman, which is not in place at this stage of our reflections. Let me say, though, that I am still of the opinion that Perkins ought to give his nervous system a chance and not worry so much about his daughters. _Income._ II.