STINGY OR ECONOMICAL.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2488, 15 June 1915, Page 7

STINGY OR ECONOMICAL.

HARRY LAUDER EXPLAINS. Writing in the "Pittsburg Dispatch," Harry Lauder explains what is called sind considered his stinginess. "It is true," he says, "and I don't think I will find him who will say me nay that I am a, bit caroful about tho expenditure! of the moneys which a kind public and an indulgent fate have sent my way. To begin with, thriftine6s is a Scotch trait, and I oome as honestly by mino as 1 do by my liking for golf. I find that I am more than ordinarily economical. I find that I could spend a great deal more money if I were-inclined to. But I cannot find why I should. I cannot find where I am denying myself any of the comforts of life; the luxuries I never had much desire for. "The incidents which have been most generally cited as proving my stinginess have had to do mostly with my faihiro to tip servants lavishly, my disinclination to purchase liquor for heterogeneous and transitory collections of actors at prominent bars, my plain and modest attire, and my jimmy pipe. It has always been my desire to pay tlioso about mo for their services. But I liavo never been able to see why a waiter, who is or should he paid by the owner of the restaurant, should have from me 10 or more per cent, of what I spend for what I want or need just because cfrtainr eckless youths have set a precedent that the waiter should have it. It being: on my part neither an impulse o.' chanty nor payment for what I deem extraordinary service, why, then, should I throw a handful of change to the waiter? Because if I don't the man across the table or at the next table v.ili say I' am cheap and stingy. If I give to my waiter then I will not be doing it because I think he has earned it, or because 1 feel moved by a spirit of charity to give from plenty to one needy, but because another, a stranger, a man to wli cm I owe nothing and whose personal opinion in no may binds me, probably thinks I ought to and inferent.iaUy Ppeuds my money for me before I do. "If, gratify a fear of this outsider's bad opinion of my generosity, I do givo tr.e waiter what I neither think he earned nor feel he should have, I do it because I am a coward who does what ho doesn't, want to or need to in fear of the unfavourable verdict of a judge who is appointed without my ronsent, and whose vcrdict, even if it did affect mo, 1 regard as badly founded. In this ease the giving the tip is not only extravagance, but cowardice. ''Whether 1 give to charily nr nol is i.o one's ospecial affair. As a mutter of fact, I do, perhaps rather more freely, and largely than yon would guess. That's because 1 having the moving impulse -to do it. I do it hec;iu.se 1 think I should, not. because you think I fho'ild, A.,id 1 do iC if 1 it.