middle-class wife still carries on the business of vicarious
leisure, for the good name of the household and its master. In
descending the social scale in any modern industrial community,
the primary fact-the conspicuous leisure of the master of the
household-disappears at a relatively high point. The head of the
middle-class household has been reduced by economic circumstances
to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations which
often partake largely of the character of industry, as in the
case of the ordinary business man of today. But the derivative
fact-the vicarious leisure and consumption rendered by the wife,
and the auxiliary vicarious performance of leisure by
menials-remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands
of reputability will not suffer to be slighted. It is by no means
an uncommon spectacle to find a man applying himself to work with
the utmost assiduity, in order that his wife may in due form
render for him that degree of vicarious leisure which the common
sense of the time demands.

The leisure rendered by the wife in such cases is, of course, not
a simple manifestation of idleness or indolence. It almost
invariably occurs disguised under some form of work or household
duties or social amenities, which prove on analysis to serve
little or no ulterior end beyond showing that she does not occupy
herself with anything that is gainful or that is of substantial
use. As has already been noticed under the head of manners, the
greater part of the customary round of domestic cares to which
the middle-class housewife gives her time and effort is of this
character. Not that the results of her
attention to household matters, of a decorative and mundificatory
character, are not pleasing to the sense of men trained in