IF WE want something, we plan to get it. We say, "I will do this, not that; I will use my time, as I have little strength; I will give my strength, as I have little money; or, I will give my money as I have little time to give." A plan is merely a series of choices, a record of things taken and things left for the sake of obtaining some end or of following some ideal. If we wish the people for whom we keep house to be well and happy, and good, we shall plan to make them so, as earnestly and definitely as if we were making a train schedule, or drawing the plans of a house, or writing the outline of a book. The object of a housekeeping plan may be an ideal, but the plan is based on a definite, practical fact--the amount of income. The plan itself is the record of the choices made in the outlay of that amount of income. The first thing for a family to do when they wish to make a plan, is to impress on their minds, not what they think they will have or what they think they ought to have, but the definite amount of money which they have. Some people gamble who do not go to races or play cards. They bet on futurity by spending something they expect to make, or risk a purchase on the security of Aunt Maria's usual Christmas present. The indications of this sort of gambling are the casual remarks one hears too often; "I just had to have it," or "We could not keep up our position without it," or, "I can't have my children dressed like beggars," or "It was awfully expensive, but I will save on something else." They are silly words and not honest. Silly, because they mean that some momentary self-indulgence has been thought worth the price of long unrest and anxiety; not honest, because if people have what they cannot pay for, they have what some one else has paid for as truly as if they had carried off a parcel belonging to the person standing beside them at a counter. In that matter of Aunt Maria, there is an extra offense. A gift should bring some special pleasure, or meet some special emergency. Counted on, or spent beforehand, it gives no happy surprise, no unexpected pleasure or relief; and what is worse, Aunt Maria gets no more happiness from making the gift than she would from paying the interest on a mortgage. Counting on gifts is a mean trick. If a child's parents do this, they cannot reasonably blame him for calculating the inheritance he will acquire at their death.