ANNUAL BUDGET--MINIMUM--FOR FAMILY OF FIVE PERSONS

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."