ignobly artful plan which insures that they shall break down just at that point where the wear and tear come hardest, so that an article otherwise complete shall be scrapped wastefully or go back to the trade to be tinkered.
But leave things the actual design of which you cannot control, and come to dress, our own daily wearing apparel. I do not know if the men of my audience are aware that undergarments wear out much quicker if they are tight-fitting and worn at a stretch than if they are loose, but that is so. And, in consequence, a smart shopman has the greatest reluctance to sell you anything that is, as he conceives it, one size too large for you. The reason being that the looser fit lasts longer and is bad for trade—that it makes for endurance instead of for galloping consumption.
In the majority of houses whose cold water systems I have inspected the pipes are nearly always run at the most exposed angle of the containing walls, so that if there is a frost, the frost may have a chance of getting at the pipes and bursting them, and so give the trade a fresh job. Again, every housewife knows that in the ordinary daily conflicts between tea-sets and domestic service more cups get broken than saucers. And I suppose every household in London has got some corner shelf piled with superfluous saucers (useless widowers mourning the departure of their better halves); but it is very exceptional—only in one shop that I know—that one is able to replace the cup (in certain
