rosewood, bound with brass and gilt, fitted and lined with silver
Such lavish expenditure is a natural consequence of a state of society where wealth is the main distinction. Mrs. John Smith’s position as a leader of the ton is due exclusively to her great riches and her elaborate displays. Mrs. Richard Roe will naturally try to outshine her, and thus rise above her in the social scale. Many persons seeking admission into such society, and finding wealth the only requisite, will make any sacrifice to accomplish their end. If they have not wealth they will affect to have it. They could not counterfeit good birth, or high breeding, but they can assume the appearance of being wealthy. They can conduct themselves, for a while at least, in a manner utterly disproportioned to their means, and so they go on, until their funds and credit being exhausted, they are forced to drop out of the circles in which they have moved, and the so-called friends who valued them only for their supposed wealth, instantly forget that they ever knew them. No more invitations are left for them, they are not even tolerated in “good society,” and are “cut” on the street as a matter of course.
Not a year passes but records the failure of some prominent business man in New York. His friends are sorry for him, and admit that he was prudent and industrious in his business. “His family did it,” they tell you, shaking their heads. “They lived too fast. Took too much money to run the house, to dress, and to keep up in society.” Only the All Seeing Eye can tell how many men who stand well in the mercantile community are tortured continually by the thought that their extravagance or that of their families is bringing them to sure and certain ruin; for not even in New York can a man live beyond his actual means. They have not the moral courage to live within their legitimate incomes. To do so would be to lose their positions in society, and they go on straining every nerve to meet the demands upon them, and then the crash comes, and they are ruined.
Those who dwell in the great city, and watch its ways with observant eyes, see many evils directly attributable to the sin of extravagance. These evils are not entirely of a pecuniary nature. There are others of a more terrible character. Keen observers see every day women whose husbands and fathers are in receipt of limited incomes, dressing as if their means were unlimited. All this magnificence is not purchased out of the lawful income of the husband or father. The excess is made up in other ways—often by the sacrifice of the woman’s virtue. She finds a man willing to pay liberally for her favors, and carries on an intrigue with him, keeping her confiding husband in ignorance of it all the while. She may have more than one lover—perhaps a dozen. When a woman sins from motives such as these, she does not stop to count the cost. Her sole object is to get money, and she gets it. It is this class of nominally virtuous married and unmarried women that support the infamous houses of assignation to be found in the city.
The curse of extravagance does not manifest itself in dress alone. One cannot enter the residence of a single well-to-do person in the city without seeing evidences of it. The house is loaded with the richest and rarest of articles, all intended for show, and which are oftentimes arranged without the least regard to taste. The object is to make the house indicate as much wealth on the part of its owner as possible. It makes but little difference whether the articles are worth what was paid for them, or whether they are arranged artistically—if the sum total is great, the owner is satisfied. It is a common thing to see the walls of some elegant mansion disfigured with frescoes, which, though executed at an enormous cost, are utterly without merit or taste. Again one sees dozens of paintings, bought for works of the old masters, lining the walls of the richest mansions of the city, which are the merest daubs, and the works of the most unscrupulous Bohemians. Not long since, a collection of paintings was offered for sale in New York, the owner being dead. They had been collected at great expense, and were the pride of their former owner. With a few exceptions they were wretched copies, and in the whole lot, over five hundred in number, there were not six genuine “old masters,” or “masters” of any age.
Entertainments are given in the most costly style. From ten to twenty thousand dollars are spent in a single evening in this way. At a fashionable party from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of champagne is consumed, besides other wines and liquors. Breakfasts are given at a cost of from one to three thousand dollars; suppers at a still higher cost. This represents the expense to the host of the entertainment; but does not cover the cost of the toilettes to be provided for the family, which make up several thousand dollars more.
Suppers or dinners are favorite entertainments, and the outlay required for them is oftentimes very heavy. The host frequently provides nothing but viands imported from foreign lands. Sets of china of great cost, or of silver equally expensive, or even of gold, are displayed ostentatiously. Sometimes the supper-room is entirely refitted in red, blue, or gold, everything, even the lights and flowers, being of one color, in order that the affair may be known as Mrs. A---’s red, blue, or gold supper. Some of the most extravagant entertainers will place at the side of each cover an exquisite bouquet inside of which is a costly present of jewelry.
All this reckless expenditure in the midst of so much sorrow and suffering in the great city! “The bitter cold of winter,” says the Manager of the ‘Children’s Aid Society,’ in his appeal for help, “and the freezing storms have come upon thousands of the poor children of this city, unprepared. They are sleeping in boxes, or skulking in doorways, or shivering in cellars without proper clothing, or shoes, and but half-fed. Many come bare-footed through the snow to our industrial schools. Children have been known to fall fainting on the floor of these schools through want of food. Hundreds enter our lodging-houses every night, who have no home. Hundreds apply to our office for a place in the country, who are ragged, half-starved, and utterly unbefriended.”
III. FASHIONABLE FOLLIES.
We have spoken of the women of fashion. What shall we say of the men? They are neither refined nor intellectual. They have a certain shrewdness coupled, perhaps, with the capacity for making
