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to them only after their parents' death, the habit of early 

 saving when expenses are increased on first leaving home 

 might enable young people to live much more economically 

 than they have done in the luxurious houses where they 

 have been brought up. Anybody who remembers the 

 accounts of the childhoods of our grandfathers and 

 grandmothers will realise what a garret life the children 

 of rich people led at the beginning of the century. The 

 following anecdote is a small instance in point : My 

 grandparents were very rich, and spent 60,OOOZ. on the 

 Parliamentary election of their eldest son. My mother, 

 who came in the middle of a large family, has often 

 described to me how underfed she was as a child, and 

 how she would gladly pick up and eat the sucked crusts 

 dropped by the babies on the nursery floor. Another of the 

 terrors of her childhood was that during the cold Northern 

 winters the nurserymaid used to be sent down to break 

 the ice on a fountain in the yard, where the children 

 were habitually bathed, as a means of strengthening 

 them. She also remembered the keen delight with 

 which they welcomed the news that the ice was un- 

 breakable. When they grew up, after seventeen their 

 life was merged into that of their parents, and my 

 mother used to wonder what they would think of her 

 she had seen so little of them during her childhood. 



This bringing-up may certainly have had the effect of 

 enabling the children of the rich to make poorer mar- 

 riages than they are willing to do now after being nursed 

 in the lap of luxury from their infancy. Poor marriages 

 can be very happy if both parties realise what they 

 undertake, and if the husband belongs to a profession 

 where an increase of income is possible, and where his 

 professional expenditure and the position he has to main- 

 tain are not out of all proportion to his income as a 

 married man. Members of society who marry poor 



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