Men of fixed salaries spend every cent of their income, and then leave their children to depend on the precarious charity and reluctant friendship of a world they have wasted their substance to please. Men who rush into enterprise and speculation, keep up their credit by splendor; and should they sink, they and their families carry with them extravagant habits to corrode their spirits with discontent, perchance to tempt them into crime. 'I know we are extravagant,' said one of my acquaintance, the other day; 'but how can I help it? My husband does not like to see his wife and daughters dress more meanly than those with whom they associate.' 'Then, my dear lady, your husband has not as much moral dignity and moral courage as I thought he had. He should be content to see his wife and daughters respected for neatness, good taste, and attractive manners.' 'This all sounds very well in talk,' replied the lady; 'but, say what you will about pleasing and intelligent girls, nobody will attend to them unless they dress in the fashion. If my daughters were to dress in the plain, neat style you recommend, they would see all their acquaintance asked to dance more frequently than themselves, and not a gentleman would join them in Cornhill.' 'I do not believe this in so extensive a sense as you do. Girls may appear genteelly without being extravagant, and though some fops may know the most approved color for a ribbon, or the newest arrangement for trimming, I believe gentlemen of real character merely notice whether a lady's dress is generally in good taste, or not. But, granting your statement to be true, in its widest sense, of what consequence is it? How much will the whole happiness of your daughter's life be affected by her dancing some fifty times less than her companions, or wasting some few hours less in the empty conversation of coxcombs? A man often admires a style of dress, which he would not venture to support in a wife. Extravagance has prevented many marriages, and rendered still more unhappy. And should your daughters fail in forming good connexions, what have you to leave them, save extravagant habits, too deeply rooted to be eradicated. Think you those who now laugh at them for a soiled glove, or an unfashionable ribbon, will assist their poverty, or cheer their neglected old age? No; they would find them as cold and selfish as they are vain. A few thousands in the bank are worth all the fashionable friends in Christendom.' Whether my friend was convinced, or not, I cannot say; but I saw her daughters in Cornhill, the next week, with new French hats and blonde veils. It is really melancholy to see how this fever of extravagance rages, and how it is sapping the strength of our happy country. It has no bounds; it pervades all ranks, and characterizes all ages. I know the wife of a pavier, who spends her three hundred a year in 'outward adorning,' and who will not condescend to speak to her husband, while engaged in his honest calling.