ight, saying, "We can do
that in the dark." "Sir, you are my master in the art," said the
"Vulture;" "I need ask no further. I see where your secret lies."

Yet that kind of economy which verges on the niggardly is better than the
extravagance that laughs at it. Either, when carried to excess, is not
only apt to cause misery, but to ruin the character.

"Lay by something for a rainy day," said a gentleman to an Irishman in
his service. Not long afterwards he asked Patrick how much he had added
to his store. "Faith, nothing at all," was the reply; "I did as you bid
me, but it rained very hard yesterday, and it all went--in drink."

"Wealth, a monster gorged
'Mid starving populations."

But nowhere and at no period were these contrasts more startling than in
Imperial Rome. There a whole population might be trembling lest they
should be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian corn-ship, while the
upper classes were squandering fortunes at a single banquet, drinking out
of myrrhine and jeweled vases worth hundreds of pounds, and feasting on
the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales. As a
consequence, disease was rife, men were short-lived. At this time the
dress of Roman ladies displayed an unheard-of splendor. The elder Pliny
tells us that he himself saw Lollia Paulina dressed for a betrothal feast
in a robe entirely covered with pearls and emeralds, which had cost
40,000,000 sesterces, and which was known to be less costly than some of
her other dresses. Gluttony, caprice, extravagance, ostentation,
impurity, rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other means
by which to break the monotony of its weariness or alleviate the anguish
of its despair.

The expense ridiculously bestowed on the Roman feasts passes all belief.
Suetonius mentions a supper given to Vitellius by his brother, in which,
among other articles, there were two thousand of the choicest fishes,
seven thousand of the most delicate birds, and one dish, from its size
and capacity, named the aegis or shield of Minerva. It was filled
chiefly with the liver of the scari, a delicate species of fish, the
brains of pheasants and peacocks, and the tongues of parrots, considered
desirable chiefly because of their great cost.

"I hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole,
"for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once
bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she t