s,
in the first place, ten thousand more than he need, for a location in
a fashionable part of the city, though the air will be closer and the
chances of health less; he spends three or four thousand more on a
stone front, on marble mantels imported from Italy, on plate-glass
windows, plated hinges, and a thousand nice points of finish, and has
perhaps but one bath-room for a whole household, and that so connected
with his own apartment that nobody but himself and his wife can use
it.

"Another man buys a lot in an open, airy situation, which fashion has
not made expensive, and builds without a stone front, marble mantels,
or plate-glass windows, but has a perfect system of ventilation
through his house, and bathing-rooms in every story, so that the
children and guests may all, without inconvenience, enjoy the luxury
of abundant water.

"The first spends for fashion and show, the second for health and
comfort.

"Here is a man that will buy his wife a diamond bracelet and a lace
shawl, and take her yearly to Washington to show off her beauty in
ball dresses, who yet will not let her pay wages which will command
any but the poorest and most inefficient domestic service. The woman
is worn out, her life made a desert by exhaustion consequent on a
futile attempt to keep up a showy establishment with only half the
hands needed for the purpose. Another family will give brilliant
parties, have a gay season every year at the first hotels at Newport,
and not be able to afford the wife a fire in her chamber in
midwinter, or the servants enough food to keep them from constantly
deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy,
desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed
to pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families consider
economy. Economy in the view of some is undisguised slipshod
slovenliness in the home circle for the sake of fine clothes to be
shown abroad; it is undisguised hard selfishness to servants and
dependants, counting their every approach to comfort a needless
waste,--grudging the Roman Catholic cook her cup of tea at dinner on
Friday, when she must not eat meat,--and murmuring that a cracked,
second-hand looking-glass must be got for the servants' room: what
business have they to want to know how they look?

"Some families will employ the cheapest physician, without regard to
his ability to kill or cure; some will treat diseases in their
incipiency