he was a master-mechanic in New York, with a thousand a year, and a flat
for twelve dollars a month; he would have the best time in the world."

Her husband nodded his acquiescence. "Fighting-cock wouldn't be in it,"
he said. "Trouble is, we all want to do the swell thing."

"But you can't all do it," I ventured, "and, from what I see of the
simple, out-of-the-way neighborhoods in my walks, you don't all try."

"Why, no," he said. "Some of us were talking about that the other night
at the club, and one of the fellows was saying that he believed there was
as much old-fashioned, quiet, almost countrified life in New York, among
the great mass of the people, as you'd find in any city in the world.
Said you met old codgers that took care of their own furnaces, just as
you would in a town of five thousand inhabitants."

"Yes, that's all very well," said his wife; "but they wouldn't be nice
people. Nice people want to live nicely. And so they live beyond their
means or else they scrimp and suffer. I don't know which is worst."

"But there is no obligation to do either?" I asked.

"Oh yes, there is," she returned. "If you've been born in a certain way,
and brought up in a certain way, you can't get out of it. You simply
can't. You have got to keep in it till you drop. Or a woman has."

"That means the woman's husband, too," said Mr. Makely, with his wink for
me. "Always die together."

In fact, there is the same competition in the social world as in the