There was living near us a man who made a business of gathering up the offal of several hundred kitchens in the city, as food for pigs. I know that he grew rich at this vocation. He lived in a much better house than ours, and his wife and daughters dressed as expensively as the wealthiest women. They had a piano, and music in abundance. He had several carts which were sent on their daily rounds through the city, collecting the kitchen-waste of boarding-houses, hotels, and private families. The quantity of good, wholesome food which these carts brought away to be fed to pigs was incredible. It was a common thing to see whole loaves of bread taken out of the family swill-tub, with joints of meat not half eaten, sound vegetables, and fragments of other food, as palatable and valuable as the portion that had been consumed on the table. It seemed as if there were hundreds of families who made it a point never to have food served up a second time. The waste by this thriftlessness was great. I doubt not that some men must have been kept poor by such want of proper oversight on the part of their wives, as I know that it enriched the individual who gathered up the fat crumbs which fell from their tables. I think it must be quite true that "fat kitchens make lean wills." These slight incidental confirmations of the theory of national wastefulness came under my daily notice. I had heretofore overlooked them, but now they attracted my attention. Then I had only to direct my eye to other and higher fields of observation to be sure that it had some foundation. The streets, the shop-windows, were eloquent witnesses for it. The waste of clothing material consequent on the introduction of hoop-skirts was seen to be prodigious. It was not only the poor thin body that was now to be covered with finery, but the huge balloon in which fashion required that that body should be enveloped. I thought, now that the subject was one for study, that I could see it running through almost every thing. This wastefulness, then, was to be the ground on which the sewing-woman was to rest her hopes of continued employment. It might be good holding-ground in times of high general prosperity, when money was abundant and circulation active; but how would it be when reverses of any kind overtook the nation? As extravagance was the rule now, it occurred to me that so would a stringent economy be the rule then, The old hats that were usually thrown away upon the commons would be rejuvenated and worn again,--the parsimony of one crisis seeking to make up for the wastefulness of another; for when a sharp turn of hard times comes round, everybody takes to economizing. There are older heads and more observant minds than my own, that must remember how these things have worked in bygone years. These have had the experience of a whole lifetime to enable them to judge: I was a mere inquirer on the threshold of a very brief one. * * * * *