Therefore one who would live wisely and has the present means, though
he may deplore existing misery and seek to relieve it, does not give
away to others all his substance but spends it chiefly on himself and
his family until he has satisfied certain needs. By way of a house
he feels that he requires not merely a frail, unornamental shelter,
but a carefully constructed, well ventilated, cosily and artistically
furnished dwelling, where his family will neither be scrimped for space
nor exposed to discomforts, and where he can entertain his friends
tastefully if not with elegance. All this costs money and involves
large and recurrent outlays for heating, lighting, upholstery, sanitary
appliances, silver, china, and glass. It is not sufficient for him that
his children should be sure of their own father; he is solicitous,
besides, that they should grow up as free as possible from physical
blemishes, and mentally and spiritually sound and attractive. To
promote this he must needs consult or engage from time to time skilled
specialists, dentists, oculists, dancing and drawing masters, private
tutors, and music-teachers. To enable these same sons and daughters
to make the most of themselves, he must, during their early manhood
and womanhood, enable them to pursue professional or other studies, to
travel, and to mingle in cultivated and well-bred society. He must live
in a choice neighborhood that he may surround himself and his family
with refining influences, and accordingly he must pay from twelve
hundred to twenty-five hundred or three thousand dollars a year for
rent, according to the size and desirability of the premises. Unless he
would have his wife and daughters merely household factors and drudges,
he must keep from three to five or six servants, whose wages vary from
four to six or seven dollars a week, and feed them.
Nor can the athletic, æsthetic, or merely pleasurable needs of a
growing or adolescent household be ignored. He must meet the steady
and relentless drain from each of these sources, or be conscious that
his flesh and blood have not the same advantages and opportunities
which are enjoyed by their contemporaries. He must own a pew, a library
share, a fancy dress costume, and a cemetery lot, and he must always
have loose change on hand for the hotel waiter and the colored railway
porter. The family man in a large city who meets these several demands
to his entire satisfaction will have little of ten thousand dollars
left for the purchase of a trotter, a fur overcoat, and a diamond pin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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