hospitality, making nearly as much more;
and to crown it, there must be the single woman's favorite lecturer or
_prima donna_; for ah! we too, in some form, must have our cigars and
champagne. A round thousand a year for ever so small a package of
humanity!

And of course, as goods are higher in small quantities, so in living by
this individual way it will be discovered that prices are prodigious,
but that weights and measures are not. After opening the small purse
regularly at half-hour intervals for several weeks, one at length finds
herself opening it when there is nothing to be bought, from mere
muscular habit. Altogether it is easy to spend as much as a second-rate
Congressman, without any of his accommodations. This is wherein one does
not master civilization.

Mr. McCulloch, in his Report on the Treasury, suggested an increase of
salary for certain subordinates in his department, declaring that they
could not support their families in due rank on four, five, or even six
thousand dollars a year. It is easy to believe it. It is easy to believe
anything that may be stated with regard to money, except that one will
ever be able to get enough of it to cover these terrible charges. The
entire fabric of things rests on money; and our prices would drive a
respectable Frenchman into suicide. O poor Robin Ruff! alas for your
grand visions that you sang so glowingly to dear Gaffer Green! In this
age of the world, O what could you do, or where could you go, e'en on a
thousand pounds a year, poor Robin Ruff?

And so long as each must keep her separate establishment, it will not be
found possible to reduce living much below the present figures. But
London has more wisely met the pressure of the times in those
magnificent clubhouses, which have made Pall Mall almost a solid square
of palaces hardly inferior to the homes of the nobility themselves. Each
of these houses has its hundreds of members, who really fare
sumptuously, having all the luxuries of wealth on the prices that one
pays here for poverty. The food is furnished by the best purveyors, and
charged to the consumers at cost; all other expenses of the
establishment being met by the members' initiation fees, ranging from
L32 entrance fee and L11 annual subscription, to L9 and L6 for entrance
and subscription. Being admirably officered and planned throughout,
these gigantic households are systematized to the beautiful smoothness
of small ones; their phrase of "fare-we