one farthing. To give, I say, for
extravagant indulgence is another thing; and it was a fine, proud
pleasure to feast a lot of fellows at his sole expense. If meanness is
brother to wealth, it is at any rate first cousin to extravagance.

When the dowager collects "her dear five hundred friends" to parade
before the fresh young heirs her wax-light lovely daughters--when all is
glory, gallopade, and Gunter--when Rubini warbles smallest, and
Lablanche is heard as thunder on the stairs--speak, tradesmen, ye who
best can tell, the closeness that has catered for that feast; tell it
out, ye famished milliners, ground down to sixpence on a ball-dress
bill; whisper it, ye footmen, with your wages ever due; let Gath, let
Askelon re-echo with the truth, that extortion is the parent of
extravagance!

Now, that episode should have been in a foot note; but no one takes the
trouble to read notes; and with justice too; for if a man has any thing
to say, let him put it in his text, as orderly as may be. And, if order
be sometimes out of the question, as seems but clearly suitable at
present to our hero's manner of life, it is wise to go boldly on,
without so prim an usher; to introduce our thoughts as they reveal
themselves, ignorant of "their own degrees," not "standing on the order
of their coming," but, as a pit crowd on a benefit-night, bustling over
one another, helter-skelter, "in most admired disorder." This will well
comport with Roger's daily life: for, notwithstanding the frequent
interference of an Amazon wife--regardless of poor, dear Grace's gentle
voice and melancholy eyes--in spite of a conscience pricking in his
breast, with the spines of a horse-chestnut, that evil crock
appeared from the beginning to have been found for but one sole
purpose--_videlicet_, that of keeping alight in Roger's brain the fire
of mad intoxication. Yes, there were sundry other purposes, too, which
may as well be told directly.

The utter dislocation of all home comforts occupied the foremost rank.
True--in comparison with the homes of affluence and halls of
luxury--those comforts may have formerly seemed few and far between; yet
still the angel of domestic peace not seldom found a rest within the
cottage. Not seldom? always: if sweet-eyed Grace be such an angel, that
ever-abiding guest, full of love, duty, piety, and cheerfulness. But
now, after long-enduring anguish, vexed in her righteous soul by the
shocking sights and sounds of the dru