CHAPTER VIII.
TO OWN OR TO RENT: A DIFFICULT QUESTION.
"Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comment of one's neighbors." -- Miss MULOCK.
When the ideals of an older generation are forced upon a younger, already struggling under new and strange environment, the effect is often opposite to that intended.

The elders in their pride of knowledge, and the real-estate promoters in their greed for gain, have been urging the young man to own his house on penalty of shirking his plain duty.

They say he must have a home to offer his bride, as the bird has a nest.

Building-loan associations, homes on the instalment plan, appeal to the sentiments they think the young man ought to heed.
The young man is often modest, almost always sensitive, and he prefers to bear dispraise rather than to tell the real reason he hesitates.

His ear is closer to the ground, he feels even if he cannot express the doubt of the disinterestedness of the land-scheme promoter, of the wisdom of his father.