Excessive fashion is productive of a most ruinous strife. The
expenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors
have, not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great
anxiety is as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly
equipage. The weapons used in the warfare of social life are not
Minié rifles, and Dahlgren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs
and mirrors, and vases, and Gobelins, and Axminsters. Many household
establishments are like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost
strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific explosion. "Who cares,"
say they, "if we only come out ahead?"

There is no one cause to-day of more financial embarrassment, and of
more dishonesties, than this determination, at all hazards, to live as
well as or better than other people. There are persons who will risk
their eternity upon one fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the
splendors of heaven to get another trinket.

"My house is too small." "But," says some one, "you cannot pay for a
larger." "Never mind that; my friends have a better residence, and so
will I." "A dress of that pattern I must have. I cannot afford it by
a great deal; but who cares for that? My neighbor had one from that
pattern, and I must have one." There are scores of men in the dungeons
of the penitentiary, who risked honor, business,--everything, in the
effort to shine like others. Though the heavens fall, they must be "in
the fashion."

The most famous frauds of the day have resulted from this feeling. It
keeps hundreds of men struggling for their commercial existence. The
trouble is that some are caught and incarcerated, if their larceny
be small. If it be great, they escape, and build their castle on the