Bill Nye On Economy

I read an essay recently on the inside of a valued exchange on the subject of economy, which Rieatly interested me. It related to the great expenses which really aggregated froni little ones, and dealt with the matter of daily papar, bootblaeks, shaving expenses, baths, etc., and showed how millions of the people's nioney were annually squandered in this way that ought to go towards buying books. The article set me to thinking, tnd I resolved to investígate it. I was more especially taken with the idea of extravagance in the matter oí barbers and barber shops. You can go to a gorgeous shop and pay fif teen cents and a tip for a shave, or you can go where you can avoid the tip, or you can go to a ten cent shop, or you can get shaved on the Bowery for five cents, or you can ignore the whole business and let the wind blow through your wlüskers. Last week I was thunderstruck when I found how much could be saved by changing from a fifteen cent barber to a five cent barber and keeping it up for a year. Counting 300 days as a fair estímate of the number on which I would be apt to shave, I found that by this change I could have at the end of the year $.10, with which to buy books or cross barred trousers or any other means of intellectual improvement which I mKhb okooaO. I cuultl Wy une oí tnuse expensive books that Mr. De Lux occasionally gets out, or I could hear Patti or buy a small yet fragrant dog tor fóO. 1 could also buy myself soine more liair or get niy teeth filled. I could take a classical course on the banjo or buy an interest in a bird dog with $30. But I wanted, more tban anything else, to get more books. I wanted a new photograph album most of all. An album with illustrations in it, to lay on the parlor table and explain to strangers in low, passionate toues, is a never ending source of pleasure to the thinking mind. When a frontispioce showing the proprietor as he looked with side whiskers, and later, a view where he was photographed with chin whiskers and holding a war time plug hat in his s wollen hands; with a picture of grandmother holding a bible as though it might be a glass bomb, and a front view of a sightless child that makes up for its total absence of eyes by introducing a soul stirring mouth that would mal;e a golden haired bail of North Carolina butter turn white in a single uight. With all these little specimer of plastic art, I of ten think that a photograph album will do more toward entertaming a mixed company than any other literary work with which I am familiar. So I went into a low priced barber shop a week ago and began to save $30 for the purpose of adJing to my library. I soon discovered that in a five cent barber shop you get less consideration and a lower grade of lather up your nose than elsewhere. I believe that the man who shaves you for five cents makes his own soap. Possibly tie works up some of his fattest patrons that way. Anyhow, the soap he uses smells badly and tastes worse than any soap I have ever participated in. At this price of shave one saves financially, but he loses cutaneously. The chair I sat in was not a good easy chair, and the 6piral springs in it occasionally had to come to the surface for more air. I became very much attached to one of these springs, and the ten cents I saved on the shave I had to pay a tailor down town who trephined my trousers for me. The chair was also mentally a wreek, and its memory was failing, I thought. Just as I would relax my musrles and close my eyes this tottering old chair would fnrget tsalf, and the worn out trigger that held the head rest would slip about nine cogs. Then with a low death rattle it would fall about a foot and disturb my intellectual faculties. You can get shaved quicker for five cents than you can for flfteen, but the towels are more clammy and the bay rum is rather more of a chestnut, I judge. Suffice it that I am not going to continue the coursp of fidrtnnmv t.tint. T IiqíI itintimn4-,i for the year, for I am opposed to the hoarding and accumulation of a surplus. Money is tending too much toward centralization any way, and I do not want to encourage it. While I ruay not be able to secure the books which I contemplated buyiug with my saving?, I can visit the chaniber of horrors at the Musee aud improve niy mind in such ways by actual observation. We do not get all oureducation fi-om books. We may easily obtain many refining and eunobling ideas from other sources than the musty tomes which decórate the shelves of our libraries. One of the braiuiest men I ever knew, if I may be allowed the temporary use of that term, a man too who had succeeded in amassing quite a fortune as a result of native shrewdness and knowledge of human nature, once admitted to me iu a sudden buret of confidence, inspired perhaps by too much wine, that he had never read either of my books. And yet he had concealed this gross ignorance for five years and amassed a fortune. While this is a sad commentary on American galvanized illiteracy, it still shows that a man may be alrnost criminally ignorant in this