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Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin
page 104 of 155 (67%)

Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman whose days of
luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose bills of bygone
splendour lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not on her
purse!

With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have the
examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed but
too successfully.

Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertainments more
costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and lower
became the tone of society, its good breeding, its delicacy. More
and more were MONDE and DEMI-MONDE associated in newspaper accounts
of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in
PREMIERES REPRESENTATIONS, in imitation of each other's costumes,
MOBILIERS and slang.

Living beyond one's means became habitual--almost necessary--for
every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, every one else.

What the result of all this has been we now see in the wreck of our
prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed brightest and
highest.

Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country has incurred
and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful when I see in
England signs of our besetting sins appearing also. Paint and
chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing "Anonymas" by name, and
reading doubtfully moral novels, are in themselves small offences,
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