emulate the display of others. One is delicate in eating, another
in wine, a third in furniture or works of art or dress; and I, who
care nothing for any of these refinements, who am perhaps a plain
athletic creature and love exercise, beef, beer, flannel shirts and
a camp bed, am yet called upon to assimilate all these other tastes
and make these foreign occasions of expenditure my own. It may be
cynical: I am sure I shall be told it is selfish; but I will spend
my money as I please and for my own intimate personal
gratification, and should count myself a nincompoop indeed to lay
out the colour of a halfpenny on any fancied social decency or
duty. I shall not wear gloves unless my hands are cold, or unless
I am born with a delight in them. Dress is my own affair, and that
of one other in the world; that, in fact and for an obvious reason,
of any woman who shall chance to be in love with me. I shall lodge
where I have a mind. If I do not ask society to live with me, they
must be silent; and even if I do, they have no further right but to
refuse the invitation! There is a kind of idea abroad that a man
must live up to his station, that his house, his table, and his
toilette, shall be in a ratio of equivalence, and equally imposing
to the world. If this is in the Bible, the passage has eluded my
inquiries. If it is not in the Bible, it is nowhere but in the
heart of the fool. Throw aside this fancy. See what you want, and
spend upon that; distinguish what you do not care about, and spend
nothing upon that. There are not many people who can differentiate
wines above a certain and that not at all a high price. Are you
sure you are one of these? Are you sure you prefer cigars at
sixpence each to pipes at some fraction of a farthing? Are you
sure you wish to keep a gig? Do you care about where you sleep, or
are you not as much at your ease in a cheap lodging as in an
Elizabethan manor-house? Do you enjoy fine clothes? It is not