3,500Opera, theater, music, entertaining at restaurants,
and so on 3,500
_____
Total $74,200
A fortune in itself, you may say! Yet judged by the standards of expenditure among even the unostentatiously wealthy in New York it is moderate indeed. A friend of mine who has only recently married glanced over my schedule and said, "Why, it's ridiculous, old man! No one could live in New York on any such sum."
Any attempt to "keep house" in the old-fashioned meaning of the phrase would result in domestic disruption. No cook who was not allowed to do the ordering would stay with us. It is hopeless to try to save money in our domestic arrangements. I have endeavored to do so once or twice and repented of my rashness. One cannot live in the city without motors, and there is no object in living at all if one cannot keep up a scale of living that means comfort and lack of worry in one's household.
The result is that I am always pressed for money even on an income of seventy-five thousand dollars. And every year I draw a little on my capital. Sometimes a lucky stroke on the market or an unexpected fee evens things up or sets me a little ahead; but usually January first sees me selling a few bonds to meet an annual deficit. Needless to say, I pay no personal taxes. If I did I might as well give up the struggle at once. When I write it all down in cold words I confess it seems ridiculous. Yet my family could not be happy living in any other way.
It may be remarked that the item for charity on the preceding schedule is somewhat disproportionate to the amount of the total expenditure. I offer no excuse or justification for this. I am engaged in an honest exposition of fact—for my own personal satisfaction and profit, and for what lessons others may be able to draw from it. My charities are negligible.
The only explanation which suggests itself to my mind is that I lead so circumscribed and guarded a life that these matters do not obtrude themselves on me. I am not brought into contact with the maimed, the halt and the blind; if I were I should probably behave toward them like a gentleman. The people I am thrown with are all sleek and well fed; but even among those of my friends who make a fad of charity I have never observed any disposition to deprive themselves of luxuries for the sake of others.
Outside of the really poor, is there such a thing as genuine charity among us? The church certainly does not demand anything approximating self-sacrifice. A few dollars will suffice for any appeal. I am not a professing Christian, but the church regards me tolerantly and takes my money when it can get it. But how little it gets! I give frequently—almost constantly—but in most instances my giving is less an act of benevolence than the payment of a tax upon my social standing. I am compelled to give. If I could not be relied upon to take tickets to charity entertainments and to add my name to the subscription lists for hospitals and relief funds I should lose my caste. One cannot be too cold a proposition. I give to these things grudgingly and because I cannot avoid it.
Of course the aggregate amount thus disposed of is really not large and I never feel the loss of it. Frankly, people of my class rarely inconvenience themselves for the sake of anybody, whether their own immediate friends or the sick, suffering and sorrowful. It is trite to say that the clerk earning one thousand dollars deprives himself of more in giving away fifty than the man with an income of twenty thousand dollars in giving away five thousand. It really costs the clerk more to go down into his pocket for that sum than the rich man to draw his check for those thousands.
Where there is necessity for generous and immediate relief I occasionally, but very rarely, contribute two hundred and fifty or five hundred dollars. My donation is always known and usually is noticed with others of like amount in the daily papers. I am glad to give the money and I have a sensation of making a substantial sacrifice in doing so. Obviously, however, it has cost me really nothing! I spend two hundred and fifty dollars or more every week or so on an evening's entertainment for fifteen or twenty of my friends and think nothing of it. It is part of my manner of living, and my manner of living is an advertisement of my success—and advertising in various subtle ways is a business necessity. Yet if I give two hundred and fifty dollars to a relief fund I have an inflation of the heart and feel conscious of my generosity.
I can frankly say, therefore, that so far as I am concerned my response to the ordinary appeal for charity is purely perfunctory and largely, if not entirely, dictated by policy; and the sum total of my charities on an income of seventy-five thousand dollars a year is probably less than fifteen hundred dollars, or about two per cent.
Yet, thinking it over dispassionately, I do not conclude from this that I am an exceptionally selfish man. I believe I represent the average in this respect. I always respond to minor calls in a way that pleases the recipient and causes a genuine flow of satisfaction in my own breast. I toss away nickels, dimes and quarters with prodigality; and if one of the office boys feels out of sorts I send him off for a week's vacation on full pay. I make small loans to seedy fellows who have known better days and I treat the servants handsomely at Christmas.
I once sent a boy to college—that is, I promised him fifty dollars a year. He died in his junior term, however. Sisters of Mercy, the postman, a beggar selling pencils or shoelaces—almost anybody, in short, that actually comes within range—can pretty surely count on something from me. But I confess I never go out of my way to look for people in need of help. I have not the time.
Several of the items in my budget, however, are absurdly low, for the opera-box which, as it is, we share with several friends and which is ours but once in two weeks, alone costs us twelve hundred dollars; and my bill at the Ritz—where we usually dine before going to the theater or sup afterward—is apt to be not less than one hundred dollars a month. Besides, twenty-five hundred dollars does not begin to cover my actual personal expenses; but as I am accustomed to draw checks against my office account and thrust the money in my pocket, it is difficult to say just what I do cost myself.
Moreover, a New York family like mine would have to keep surprisingly well in order to get along with but two thousand dollars a year for doctors. Even our dentist bills are often more than that. We do not go to the most fashionable operators either. There does not seem to be any particular way of finding out who the good ones are except by experiment. I go to a comparatively cheap one. Last month he looked me over, put in two tiny fillings, cleansed my teeth and treated my gums. He only required my presence once for half an hour, once for twenty minutes, and twice for ten minutes—on the last two occasions he filched the time from the occupant of his other chair. My bill was forty-two dollars. As he claims to charge a maximum rate of ten dollars an hour—which is about the rate for ordinary legal services—I have spent several hundred dollars' worth of my own time trying to figure it all out. But this is nothing to the expense incident to the straightening of children's teeth.
When I was a child teeth seemed to take care of themselves, but my boy and girls were all obliged to spend several years with their small mouths full of plates, wires and elastic bands. In each case the cost was from eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars. A friend of mine with a large family was compelled to lay out during the tooth-growing period of his offspring over five thousand dollars a year for several years. Their teeth are not straight at that.
Then, semioccasionally, weird cures arise and seize hold of the female imagination and send our wives and daughters scurrying to the parlors of fashionable specialists, who prescribe long periods of rest at expensive hotels—a room in one's own house will not do—and strange diets of mush and hot water, with periodical search parties, lighted by electricity, through the alimentary canal.
One distinguished medico's discovery of the terra incognita of the stomach has netted him, I am sure, a princely fortune. There seems to be something peculiarly fascinating about the human interior. One of our acquaintances became so interested in hers that she issued
