The miseries of debt and bankruptcy may often be the outcome of an extravagant or profligate disposition, and need not be directly connected with an excess or deficiency of means. But this solicitude to obey the rigid, conventional, and universally accepted measure for classing the community according to their incomes, this horror of dropping in the scale, is responsible for much suffering and secret despair, especially among women who have not been trained to work and find themselves turned adrift on the world with a bare pittance. Higher in the scale, where there is an ample competence, the amount spent on appearances is frequently unreasonably excessive. The craving to associate with people who are richer and the fear of being thought badly off, knowing that that is the equivalent of becoming socially a pariah, produces a serious deficiency in the more important needs of life, bitterness at the hardness of fate, stinting, useless saving, and sometimes eventual impoverishment and ruin. But without having actually to face catastrophe, these people, simply by the injudicious and ill-managed administration of what they have got, cannot live the full and decent lives their circumstances allow them. This is true of a very large well-to-do class who cry out for more money while they are spending too large a portion of what they have in things which, for them, are unnecessary extravagances, but which they cling to as indispensable. They are probably slackening their exertions in directions where they would be all the better for a little extra stimulant in the shape of trouble and effort. The constant easy satisfaction of their small requirements has an enervating and weakening effect on their character, and there is neither charm nor adventure in their lives, for there is a point when satisfaction almost suffocates. Human nature is so constituted that energy increases in proportion as it is used. The more a man has to do, the more he wants to do, the more he can do. All kinds of insignificant little daily efforts keep the machine perpetually in motion and in order, ready and alert for more work, and the spirit of disinclination is shut out. Relax those efforts, augment sensuous comforts, and the machine will require starting and restarting, with a continual extra spurt and additional exertion. The spirit of disinclination insinuates itself, and indolence and apathy creep in. It has been shown in the animal world that the spoilt and carefully combed and washed pet is far less intelligent than the animal who has to look after himself, scratch his own fleas, and lick the dirt off his paws. We are under the impression that if we can get rid of the various irritations of daily life, which are our fleas, the time spent in scratching will be devoted to work of a higher order more in conformity with our powers. But, given the time, somehow we do not manage to do the extra work. The ambition of every man who acquires more money is