Nothing a Year 19 



velt, in criticising Ten Acres Enough, says that 

 Mr. Morris, the author of that famous book, 

 must have allowed his wife and daughters to 

 go naked for more than five years, because, in 

 his account of expenditure at the end of the 

 book, not a word is said as to the cost of 

 clothes; which leads me to say that while I 

 might consider myself perfectly happy with 

 $20 worth of clothes a year, another man might 

 think it necessary to spend $100, and his wife 

 three times that amount. I like to wear a 

 flannel shirt of a rough kind nearly all the year 

 round, and although the fashion is growing, 

 some excellent people still consider the flannel 

 shirt a badge of social degradation. My chil- 

 dren are dressed in the coarsest and plainest 

 fashion, far too coarse and too plain for most 

 city people to think proper. I work my own 

 garden ; I sail my own boat ; I rake my own 

 oysters; all of which work many men I know 

 would consider beneath them. They have no 

 more taste for such work than for the class of 

 books with which I occupy my evenings. My 

 house is plain, and the living plainer. I in- 

 finitely prefer that the dinner shall be of one 



