"Perhaps I was going to say that even those Germans are not so dear as they are in the fatherland, though rude. They do not tend much if at all to tables d'hote, but the Italians and the French who do, serve you a better meal for a lower price than you would get in Paris, or Rome, or Naples. There the prevalent ideal is five francs, with neither wine nor coffee included. I'll allow that the cheap table d'hote is mainly the affair of single men and women, and does not merit the consideration I've given it. If it helps a young couple to do with one maid, or with none, instead of two, it makes for cheapness of living. Service is costly and it is greedy, and except in large households its diet is the same as the family's, so that anything which reduces it is a great saving. But the table d'hote which is cheap for one or two is not cheap for more, and it is not available if there are children. Housing and raw-provisioning and serving are the main questions, and in Europe the first and last are apparently much less expensive. Marketing is undoubtedly cheaper with us, and if you count in what you get with the newness, the wholesomeness, and handiness of an American flat, the rent is not so much greater than that of a European flat, with its elementary bareness. You could not, here, unless you descended from the apartment to the tenement, hire any quarter where you would not be supplied with hot and cold water, with steam heating, with a bath-room, and all the rest of it." "But," we said, "you are showing that we are more comfortably housed than the Europeans, when you should be treating the fact of relative cheapness." "I was coming to that even in the matter of housing--" "It is too late to come to it in this paper. You have now talked three thousand words, and that is the limit. You must be silent for at least another month." "But if I have something important to say at this juncture? If I may not care to recur to the subject a month hence? If I may have returned to Europe by that time?" "Then you can the better verify your statistics. But the rule in this place is inflexible. Three thousand words, neither more nor less. The wisdom of Solomon would be blue-pencilled if it ran to more." XI WAYS AND MEANS OF LIVING IN NEW YORK