to the exemplary individual who makes a
blade of grass grow, &c. &c. &c. His name,
for the convenience of identification, we will
call Hobbins.

"Hobbins," I said, when we were left
alone after dinner, "how do you manage the
war?"

He looked a little surprised at first, but
recollected my abrupt ways, and said, "I
manage the war, my dear Bobbins?—I don't
—nobody manages the war, as far as I see."

"I mean, how do you get over the increased
expense of living?"

Hobbins laughed, and said, "Take another
glass of this port—it will do you no harm—
and in fact the war won't do you any harm
either, if you do as I have done."

"I shall be delighted," I replied, and drank
the wine in a moment. "How?" I said, expectingly.

"The war," he said, "is not half so ruinous
as you think. The increase upon the income
tax is about four per cent. How much have
you a-year?"

I paused a little; but hang it, what's the
use of being close when you go to a friend for
advice? I told him as near as I knew.

"That's about—let me see. You ought to
live well enough on that," he said; "and you
have a wife and two daughters?"

"Yes," I replied; "but if you think you can
clip off a single shilling out of gloves and
bonnets, boots and silk stockings, you are
mistaken. Mrs. Bobbins—"

"I don't mean that," said Hobbins; "but
there's another way, without curtailing a
ribbon. In short, I have no doubt, taking
England all over, that I could carry on the
war without the slightest pressure, and without
any diminution of comfort."

"Comfort," I said; "perhaps not—but
respectability; at least, what Mrs. Bobbins
calls respectability."

"She shall be more respectable than ever;
and you won't feel the tax at all. What is
the heaviest item in your weekly bills?"

"Well, you know," I said, "Georgiana
has a good appetite, and so indeed have Julia
and Marianne; and as the butcher has raised
his prices a penny a-pound, the amount is
very large—considering we are only a party
of seven, servants included."

"But you could knock off a joint, if
required, or take some of the coarser meat.
But of the unavoidables which is the most
severe?"

While I was trying to remember, he
seemed to get a little nettled at my stupidity,
and said, "I'll tell you what, Bobbins, there
isn't another man in Essex would be so slow.
Your greatest bill, in proportion to your
fortune and the number of your family, is of
course the washing."

"Ah! so it is," I cried, quite astonished at
my own forgetfulness—for I had mused upon
the subject long, and quarrelled with Mrs.
Bobbins about it regularly once a-week.

"There is the rock that England will split
on," said Hobbins. "She is such a vain fool
—is Britannia. She has California in her
wash-tubs, and won't pick up the nuggets.
Sir," he added, looking like the late Doctor
Johnson, "I will overwhelm the Russian
emperor with soap."

"How?—Cannon balls?—Too soft," I said;
but luckily so low that he didn't hear me.

"On the expenditure of this great country
in the article of washing alone, there is the
opportunity of saving more than the increased
expenses of the war. I find it so in my own
experience. This village finds it so. The
county might find it so, if it were not a desperately obstinate county; and the nation—
yes, the nation—might laugh at the doubled
taxation, and call Poland into existence without
any perceptible enlargement of its burdens.
"Ay!" he continued, warming with his subject
—"tubs and combination—dirty linen
and patriotic feeling—anything may be done!
You, my dear Bobbins, may keep a gig upon
the savings, and Warsaw may be free!"

"Julia hates gigs," I modestly observed,
"and they are all anxious about a phaëton
and ponies."

"Here is the whole question," continued
Hobbins. I may observe, by the way, that he
did not pass the decanter with the regularity
required by the solar system. "Why should
not the upper classes, as they are called, that
is, the people who have houses and families of
their own, have the benefit of union as well
as the comparatively poor, or such as artisans
and their wives and children, in the admirable
lodging-houses lately built? In nothing is
the saving more remarkable than in the
article of washing. Lay it down as a rule
at once, that no family can do its own washing
economically, unless it is of such size as to
present the features of combination, though
passing under one name. But in establishments
like yours or mine, where the work is
not enough to occupy a maid or maids entirely,
at that and nothing else, it is folly to think
of avoiding the professional washerwoman.
In her case it is only by undertaking for
several families that she makes her profits.
Her fires, her tubs, her drying rods, perform
their ministrations in  cosmopolitan spirit,
and get up the weekly linen for the most
opposite establishments. The parson's bands
meet in friendly communion on the wooden
horse with the dissenting clergyman's neckcloths
(both perhaps a little overstarched).
The money of orthodoxy and of dissent, goes
equally to the Prussian blue and the crimping
iron. But the powers of earthly washerwomen
are limited. Their appliances are
usually too scanty to give the benefit of this
social combination to its full extent; and
there can be no doubt that in country places
like this, we are at the mercy of an ignorant
and careless set of people, who charge preposterously
for work very ill done; and I
myself may state, that for many years I never