rode about, thinly disguised, in children's carriages, drawn by
nursery-maids; or fluttered aloft, delicately discernible at angles of
view, in the shape of a lace pocket-handkerchief or a fine-worked
chemisette, drying modestly at home in retired corners of back gardens.
Generally, however, the hostile influences of the large incomes and the
small mingled together on the neutral ground of the moderate incomes;
turning it into the dullest, the dreariest, the most oppressively
conventional division of the whole suburb. It was just that sort of
place where the thoughtful man looking about him mournfully at the
locality, and physiologically observing the inhabitants, would be prone
to stop suddenly, and ask himself one plain, but terrible question: "Do
these people ever manage to get any real enjoyment out of their lives,
from one year's end to another?"

To the looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate
incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies
seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the
civilized world. Is it not obviously true that, while the upper classes
and the lower classes of English society have each their own
characteristic recreations for leisure hours, adapted equally to their
means and to their tastes, the middle classes, in general, have (to
expose the sad reality) nothing of the sort? To take an example from
those eating and drinking recreations which absorb so large a portion
of existence:--If the rich proprietors of the "mansions" in the "park"
could give their grand dinners, and be as prodigal as they pleased with
their first-rate champagne, and their rare gastronomic delicacies; the
poor tenants of the brick boxes could just as easily enjoy their
tea-garden conversazione, and be just as happily and hospitably
prodigal, in turn, with their porter-pot, their teapot, their plate of
bread-and-butter, and their dish of shrimps. On either side, these