To assert that the purchase of luxuries is good for trade is quite as ridiculous as to say that a man can benefit the building and furnishing trade by burning down his house once a year. We do not want to create more artificial wants before we have satisfied the crying human needs which already exist. There is no loophole through which a reasonable defence of the senseless expenditure, which goes on in an increasing measure, can be made. Luxurious living has never been quite so blatant and unashamed as it is to-day, and the effete epicureanism and decadent effeminacy it produces stand out in rather sharp contrast to more hopeful signs of progress and moral and intellectual refinement and vigour which, happily, are visible around us. A lady writing in a review in the early ’seventies describes life in the country house, with its futile routine of heavy meals, sport, card-playing, and vacuous inanities which take the place of conversation, all very much as it is to-day. The writer speaks with dismay of gowns costing sixty guineas and of £1000 a year spent on clothes. But these figures are almost negligible compared with the sums spent nowadays. It is only through occasional actions in the courts that the outside public get an idea of what is actually spent, and it is surprising that there are not more disclosures, considering the mountainous debts that are piled up in West End shops. But the shopkeepers are very reluctant to lose a really leading customer, and they know how to meet the inconvenience of not being promptly paid. A typical case may be given of an article of clothing, the cost price of which was nine guineas, being sold for £28 7s. There may be delay in payment, but there appears to be compensation in the profit. When one hears of the woman who spent last year £36 5s. on a hat, or another who gave £1250 for a sable cape, it is not the isolated action of criminal folly that chiefly strikes one, but it is that the hat and the cape act as indicators of the sort of price such women are in the habit of paying for their clothes, a large supply of which are in the market ready to meet this artificial demand. Moreover, the habit of extravagance, especially as regards female clothing, is catching and runs through all classes once the example is set. It is a common enough and very depressing sight to see absurdly elaborate clothes, which are cheaper imitations of the latest fashions, worn by women of the lower middle-class, whose deplorable want of education is shown by their inability even to pronounce their mother tongue. They watch the rich, and gather from what they see that fine feathers make fine birds, and it is not on them that the blame should rest.