Your Odd Shillings.

Every woman has to make up her mind from day to day what to do with the odd shillings, and what she decides is usually either according to her nature or the strength of the temptations for spending placed in her path.

To the woman who will lay by and accumulate the odd shillings for some larger objective in the more or less distant future, there are thousands who place nothing but an immediate value on them, namely, what to buy with them right now.

Of recent years a marked feature has been the determined—and successful—efforts to capture these odd shillings by such methods as the price catalogue for small sundries and the chain stores. The real difficulty now is to find all the odd shillings to buy all the odds and ends you would like.

A good rule to follow is to choose, whenever possible, something with a more lasting quality rather than the more ephemeral things. For instance, one afternoon tea is the price of six mousetraps—that sort of thing. What will you have—a box of chocolates or a potato peeler? A picture show or a pair of stockings? A “binge” or a book you've craved for?

I have known people who do weigh up several expenditures this way. They are the kind of folk who have all the handy knick-knacks about the house and who seem to be up-to-the-minute in getting those little personal accessories that go with being well-turned-out.

The odd shillings have a habit of burning a hole in the pocket. I don't blame them a bit—it's their business to get into circulation somehow or other. But it really is worthwhile to say to yourself—“Well, I want this and I want that and I want the other thing. I can't have them all, but as I want them all equally, I will at least choose the one which will give me the longer-lasting pleasure or satisfaction.”

We all have to work out some kind of philosophy of life about almost everything we hear or see or come in contact with, so I think it may be no waste of time for each of you to ponder, for a little while, the philosophy of the odd shilling.

The great advantage of reaching an outlook of a definite nature on a small scale like that of your odd shillings, is that it helps you in dealing with greater things. There is the story of the rich lady who bought a painting of a cow for £11,000. She could have bought the original cow for £11. The cow, as a matter of course and in the due process of nature, kicked the bucket for the last time many years ago. The pictured cow is still a work of art, is worth much more than when it was bought, and will increase in value as the decades roll by.