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: