The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎637v] (165/239)

134
THE EXTRAVAGANT ECONOMY OF WOMEN.
prostration. Not to mention that the incompetent eat just as
much as the competent!
Did I not read this very day how two delightful female
economists, waiting for the opening of a certain theatre, sat on
camp-stools from nine in the morning till seven in the evening
of a cold, damp winter day for a chance to dive into the pit, and so
to save a shilling or two. Was there ever a more cheering example
of feminine wisdom and thrift ?
I knew a woman who had the economical fad to get double
service out of a match, but she found it awfully expensive. She
went upstairs one night to dress for dinner. A doorway, hung
with a frail, floppy art-curtain, connected her bedroom and her
dressing-room. As she entered, she heard shrieks of “ fire ” in
the street, and tearing open the window she found the house
opposite in flames, and in an instant fire-engines came clattering
through the crowd. She was a kind soul, but she did enjoy herself
immensely, as she watched it comfortably from her window. It
was over in no time, and as she looked at the chaos of fire-engines
and firemen the thought struck her how convenient it would be
if there were another fire just then in the street, for here they all
were ready to put it out!
Whereupon she lighted the gas, and, true to her principles,
carried the lighted match to her dressing-room, through the floppy
art-curtain. The next instant it was all in a blaze, and she was
hanging out of the window shrieking “ fire.” They broke down
her front door, trailed miles of dirty oozing hose upstairs, and
finally left her gazing drearily at the black ceiling, the sodden
furniture, the dirty water pouring downstairs, and a hideous burnt
wall where the fatal art-curtain had been.
“ At any rate,” she said to herself, as she took a great, long
breath, ” it was convenient.”
But since then she has never used a match twice.
How we all do love to save at the spiggot even if it does pour
out at the bung-hole ! Who of us has not seen a woman grow thin
and sharp and old in the struggle to save pennies while her open-
handed husband throws away pounds? It takes a big, broad
minded woman to know when to open her purse-strings, and
perhaps even a bigger and more strong-minded one to keep them
always comfortably ajar.
At what early age can the girl-child be taught that what is too
cheap is usually very dear? The majority of women never learn
it. How many a woman goes out to buy a warm woollen frock
and returns home with a be-chiffoned tissue-paper silk, because it
was cheap and looked so smart.” That ghastly, temporary
smartness which is a kind of whited sepulchre ! I think there is