" A GROAT A YEAR." T HERE is less learning by
heart than there used to be. " A good thing too," say all those whose verbal memory is poor and who still resent the unjust handicap of their childhood. Indeed, it does seem a waste of time to commit to memory uninteresting facts such as those of the multiplication table, which can be looked up in one minute or worked out in two. The memorizing system stopped arbitrarily at " twelve times." " Seven times " was, if we recollect rightly, the hardest to learn, and it is still hard to apply. Very few housekeepers remember when they begin their job that a small increase of expenditure per diem makes a big difference in the weekly budget, but this arithmetical surprise soon ceases to astonish, though to most of us the " answers " still seem rather arbitrary where this table is concerned Who would have thought that multiplication by seven could make so much difference to one tiny unit of extrava- gance ! No one would believe it who had not kept house The weekly wage-earner, concerned about Friday's dinner, hates the multiplication table as heartily as she did in her youth. Her arithmetical trials, however, are less complicated than those of her middle-class neighbours. They have to learn more advanced " tables." They must know the meaning of three hundred and sixty-five times one and two and three, &c., up to any number. They have always to keep the wretched figures in mind, and be incessantly multiplying small change by them. It is enough to drive one mad ! It does drive some people mad ! Are not the doctors always warning us of the dangers of " finan- cial anxiety," and does not half the " money worry " of the world trace back to the difficulty of learning this miserable little bit of arithmetic ? There are, of course, a few people who may be said to be born knowing all the really important tables. Seven times and twelve times and fifty-two times and even three hundred and sixty-five times present no difficulty to them. The psychologists, we understand, have never been able satisfactorily to account for the phenomena of arithmetical genius. The solution of the problem is complicated by the fact that these gifted persons are very often wanting in the reasoning powers which strike the ordinary mortal as more important. But whether we carp at it or admire it, this form of intuition is rare. Most of us have to grapple with these figure problems, and many of us never entirely succeed. Much poverty and some wealth witness to our ill-success. Where would some of the evening newspapers be if all their clientele knew the yearly meaning of a penny a day ? What would be the result upon the tobacco trade and that other trade known as The Trade ? What about sugar ? The War taught us a good deal of simple arithmetic. We are returning to our normal forgetfulness, consequently the flower barrows have reappeared in the London streets. The omnibus companies would all go bankrupt if women shoppers knew these difficult tables. Three uennies a day is very little to spend on unnecessary " rides." It is only two threehalfpenny fares. How many of our readers could say without thinking how much it comes to in a year ? How many when they have calculated will not be amazed at the result ? Not one in ten of the women, it may be safely asserted. None of the expenses we have been considering can be called " incidental." Any sane person can foresee them if they will take the trouble. We are always saying we cannot foretell the future. We can, however, foretell the course of the stars, and we suppose our power to do so depends upon arithmetic. It is just as certain that a penny a day is sevenpence a week as that the sun will be doing in twelve hours' time whatever he will be doing. But incidental expenses arrive out of the blue. Occasional trouble is supposed to have less effect on the general health than constant worry. The same analogy holds good where money is concerned. If we never worried we should be, we suppose, in a state to stand trouble pretty well when it came. If we never wasted our pence we could stand incidental expenses. As it is, what horrible shocks they do give us. The odd thing is that though we know they will come we never expect them because we do not know when. Putting aside illness, which a man can to some extent insure against, and everyone looks forward to in the sense of fearing it, incidental expenses put out most people's calculations occasionally. It must be so. We cannot tell what the weather will be, so how could we know that the rain would come through the roof ? We ought to have seen it was watertight ; but is there such a thing as a watertight roof when the rain really means to come in as it does at intervals of from twelve months to five years ? No political insight can tell us who is going to strike next, or how much necessary commodities will go up in consequence. Not even con- stant attendance at parochial meetings will enable us to be sure what we shall be " let in for " in the way of rates. We cannot tell what the dentist may think he has a right to charge in his all-unitemed and totally unavoidable bill. Who knows what servants will ask next, or the laundress ? No man unless he is mean and bad can be certain what charitable demand he may suddenly feel himself unable to avoid or what presents social convention will demand of him ; how often he will lose his umbrella, spoil his hat, or resist the unending temptation of the London shops—the temptation to buy something wtich he could very well do without. How we long to realize the meaning of the word " inclusive " 1 The truth is that human limitations being what they are and life being what it is the word has no meaning. It casts its ironical shadow over every prospectus upon which it appears. Who ever found his hotel bill " inclusive " unless he was content to do without everything that anybody likes Who ever found a school bill inclusive unless he was determined to deny his children at every turn ? Man was born to incidental expenses as the sparks fly upwards and there is no cure. " Tables " will not help him here. The future is dark.
But to return to the region lighted by arithmetic. It sheds its beams on the subject of laying by as well as shelling out. Fortunes are saved, though it is often as difficult to believe it as to believe the results of the multi- plication table. If we will but put faith in it, we may with luck get rich. Prizes are not for everyone or they would not be prizes ; but the way to get a chance of one is never to forget the proverb about " a groat a year." If we live with it before our eyes it is possible that we or our children may die millionaires. If we refuse inwardly to digest it we may die in the workhouse—if there is one. But we hear the impatient reader exclaim, " Is it after all worth while I Are we to spoil our working lives by keeping these hateful `tables' before our eyes ? " That depends, we would reply, upon whether you are referring to the prize or the punishment. If the preoccupation is to keep us and our children in safety, to insure us not only against ruin but against shifts, dependence, humiliation, the sordid " seediness " of those who " go down "—yes, a hundred times yes. But if circumstances ensure us a moderate degree of safety and nothing but the prizes of life are at stake, then the present writer at any rate would make a different answer. He would say " No, no, no— three hundred and sixty-five times no. The game is not worth the candle."
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