as leisure; and when performed by others than the economically
free and self-directed head of the establishment, they are to be
classed as vicarious leisure.

The vicarious leisure performed by housewives and menials, under
the head of household cares, may frequently develop into
drudgery, especially where the competition for reputability is
close and strenuous. This is frequently the case in modern life.
Where this happens, the domestic service which comprises the
duties of this servant class might aptly be designated as wasted
effort, rather than as vicarious leisure. But the latter term has
the advantage of indicating the line of derivation of these
domestic offices, as well as of neatly suggesting the substantial
economic ground of their utility; for these occupations are
chiefly useful as a method of imputing pecuniary reputability to
the master or to the household on the ground that a given amount
of time and effort is conspicuously wasted in that behalf.

In this way, then, there arises a subsidiary or derivative
leisure class, whose office is the performance of a vicarious
leisure for the behoof of the reputability of the primary or
legitimate leisure class. This vicarious leisure class is
distinguished from the leisure class proper by a characteristic
feature of its habitual mode of life. The leisure of the master
class is, at least ostensibly, an indulgence of a proclivity for
the avoidance of labour and is presumed to enhance the master's
own well-being and fulness of life; but the leisure of the
servant class exempt from productive labour is in some sort a
performance exacted from them, and is not normally or primarily
directed to their own comfort. The leisure of the servant is not