new hangings—pictures to be bought. Last season my wife changed the drawing room from Empire to Louis Seize at a very considerable outlay.
Our food, largely on account of the number of our servants, costs us from a thousand to twelve hundred dollars a month. In the spring and autumn it is a trifle less—in winter it is frequently more; but it averages, with wine, cigars, ice, spring water and sundries, over fifteen thousand dollars a year.
We rent a house at the seashore or in the country in summer at from five to eight thousand dollars, and usually find it necessary to employ a couple of men about the place.
Our three saddle-horses cost us about two thousand dollars for stabling, shoeing and incidentals; but they save me at least that in doctors' bills.
Since my wife and daughters are fond of society, and have different friends and different nightly engagements, we are forced to keep two motors and two chauffeurs, one of them exclusively for night-work. I pay these men one hundred and twenty-five dollars each a month, and the garage bill is usually two hundred and fifty more, not counting tires. At least one car has to be overhauled every year at an average expense of from two hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars. Both cars have to be painted annually. My motor service winter and summer costs on a conservative estimate at least eight thousand dollars.
I allow my wife five thousand dollars; my daughters three thousand each; and my son, who is not entirely independent, twenty-five hundred. This is supposed to cover everything; but it does not—it barely covers their bodies. I myself expend, having no vices, only about twenty-five hundred dollars.
The bills of our family doctor, the specialists and the dentist are never less than a thousand dollars, and that is a minimum. They would probably average more than double that.
Our spring trip to Paris, for rest and clothing, has never cost me less than thirty-five hundred dollars, and when it comes to less than five thousand it is inevitably a matter of mutual congratulation.
Our special entertaining, our opera box, the theater and social frivolities aggregate no inconsiderable sum, which I will not overestimate at thirty-five hundred dollars.
Our miscellaneous subscriptions to charity and the like come to about fifteen hundred dollars.
The expenses already recited total nearly seventy-five thousand dollars, or as much as my maximum income. And this annual budget contains no allowance for insurance, books, losses at cards, transportation, sundries, the purchase of new furniture, horses, automobiles, or for any of that class of expenditure usually referred to as "principal" or "plant." I inevitably am obliged to purchase a new motor every two or three years—usually for about six thousand dollars; and, as I have said, the furnishing of our city house is never completed.
It is a fact that for the last ten years I have found it an absolute impossibility to get along on seventy-five thousand dollars a year, even living without apparent extravagance. I do not run a yacht or keep hunters or polo ponies. My wife does not appear to be particularly lavish and continually complains of the insufficiency of her allowance. Our table is not Lucullan, by any means; and we rarely have game out of season, hothouse fruit or many flowers. Indeed, there is an elaborate fiction maintained by my wife, cook and butler that our establishment is run economically and strictly on a business basis. Perhaps it is. I hope so. I do not know anything about it. Anyhow, here is the smallest budget on which I can possibly maintain my household of five adults:
Taxes on city house $ 3,200
Repairs, improvements and minor alterations 2,500
Rent of country house—average 7,000
Gardeners and stablemen, and so on 800
Servants' payroll 7,800
Food supplies 15,000
Light and heat—gas, electricity, coal and wood 2,400
Saddle-horses—board and so on 2,000
Automobile expenses 8,000
Wife's allowance—emphatically insufficient 5,000
Daughters' allowance—two 6,000
Son's allowance 2,500
Self—clubs, clothes, and so on 2,500
Medical attendance—including dentist 1,000
Charity 1,500
Travel—wife's annual spring trip to Paris 3,500
Opera, 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
