I assert that we have now an intellectual problem before us.  The question is what scale of expenditure we shall use and what proportion of our desires, etc., shall we curb.

The usual hand-to-mouth method is to go ahead, do what we want until we are “up against it” and have to economize, and then for a while do without some of the more important things which we find we cannot afford, having already spent our money on things of lesser importance.  This is the lazy man’s way, the one who does not care to do his thinking, and chooses to let circumstances make his course rather than wisdom.

The system seems to have some points of merit, and it is whispered that even Uncle Sam has sometimes let his affairs be managed on this plan, but that need not enter into this case; for you and I are both of us intelligent beings, observers after a fashion, and we intend to plan things out a bit and see what we can do with them, and perhaps see what stuff this luck that people talk about is made of.

Let us see where we now stand.  We have found that it is the attitude toward your income, and the scale of living your income permits, that must be regulated; that your desires, if all were granted, will soon grow to a point far out of reach of your purse, no matter how rich you get; and, therefore, that the intellectual problem is before us of picking out a scale of living somewhere well within your present income and endeavoring to attain an attitude of mind toward living on that scale which will make you happy rather than discontented.

I know that you are thinking that I have forgotten the personal equation, that I am arguing as if all people were of the same temperament, forgetting that under given conditions one person would be happy and another would not, and that you, with your varied interests and contented disposition, would always find things to make you happy, even if you had to give up many of the luxuries which you now enjoy.  This is true, but you must please note that I have not intimated that you couldn’t; and, in fact, the point of what I say rests on the assumption that you could.  Moreover, in regard to other people, you will notice that this letter is not addressed to them; and, if any of them should happen to see it, they can put on the garment if it fits, or they can leave it alone,—­it is all one to me.

But how can we bring this about? how tell what things you have been used to keep and what to give up? how keen a desire it is well to quell, and which ones?  To reach this point, it is necessary to digress again in order to find the element of the magic touchstone which will tell us whether the thing we are looking at is made of gold or some baser metal.