LIVING ON NEXT TO NOTHING A YEAR. I/ 



says that Mr. Morris, the author of that famous 

 book, must have allowed his wife and daugh- 

 ters to go naked for more than five years, be- 

 cause, 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 flan- 

 nel shirt of a rough kind nearly all the year 

 round, and although the fashion is growing, 

 some excellent people still consider the flan- 

 nel shirt a badge of social degradation. My 

 children are dressed in the coarsest and plain- 

 est 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 even- 

 ings. My house is plain, and the living plainer. 

 I infinitely prefer that the dinner shall be of 

 one course, and the talk of music, books, and 

 art, than that there should be ten courses to- 



