Real Extravagance

The evening I posted “Penny Economies” I sat down to read Cranford (1851) by Elizabeth Gaskell (free from Project Gutenberg on my borrowed Nook). Since the book is in the public domain, I can quote at length from that night’s chapter. I thought it was particularly funny considering how hard I work to save a few pennies that I’ll spend in heartbeat at Chick-Fil-A or Taco Bell.

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I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies – careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction – any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance.  An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer’s day because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book; of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well, and this little unnecessary waste of paper (his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.  Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in; the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again.  Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides.  I am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself.  String is my foible.  My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.  To me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I have one which is not new – one that I picked up off the floor nearly six years ago.  I have really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others.  They cannot attend to conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have of invariably taking more butter than they want.  Have you not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article?  They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of their sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down; and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at all) and eats up his butter.  They think that this is not waste.

Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours – she could do this in the dark, or by firelight – and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to “keep blind man’s holiday.”  They were usually brought in with tea; but we only burnt one at a time.  As we lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening (but who never did), it required some contrivance to keep our two candles of the same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always.  The candles took it in turns; and, whatever we might be talking about or doing, Miss Matty’s eyes were habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish it and to light the other before they had become too uneven in length to be restored to equality in the course of the evening.
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What is your private economy? What about your real extravagance?

My private economies include rationing honey and milk.

My extravagances would be eating out and gas for out of town trips to visit family. I know that I’ll drop at least  $20 if we go out as a family or drive to Frontier Camp, but it’s hard to feel like that’s “real money” because the benefits are so tangible.