In a smaller city I could do the same thing for half the money--fifteen thousand dollars; in Rome, Florence or Munich I could live like a prince on half the sum. I am paying apparently forty-five thousand dollars each year for the veriest frills of existence--for geranium powder in my bath, for fifteen extra feet in the width of my drawing room, for a seat in the parterre instead of the parquet at the opera, for the privilege of having a second motor roll up to the door when it is needed, and that my wife may have seven new evening dresses each winter instead of two. And in reality these luxuries mean nothing to me. I do not want them. I am not a whit more comfortable with than without them. If an income tax should suddenly cut my bank account in half it would not seriously inconvenience me. No financial cataclasm, however dire, could deprive me of the genuine luxuries of my existence. Yet in my revised schedule of expenditure I would still be paying nearly a hundred dollars a day for the privilege of living. What would I be getting for my money--even then? What would I receive as a _quid pro quo_ for my thirty thousand dollars? I am not enough of a materialist to argue that my advantage over my less successful fellow man lies in having a bigger house, men servants instead of maid servants, and smoking cigars alleged to be from Havana instead of from Tampa; but I believe I am right in asserting that my social opportunities--in the broader sense--are vastly greater than his. I am meeting bigger men and have my fingers in bigger things. I give orders and he takes them. My opinion has considerable weight in important matters, some of which vitally affect large communities. My astuteness has put millions into totally unexpected pockets and defeated the faultily expressed intentions of many a testator. I can go to the White House and get an immediate hearing, and I can do more than that with judges of the Supreme Court in their private chambers. In other words I am an active man of affairs, a man among men, a man of force and influence, who, as we say, "cuts ice" in the metropolis. But the economic weakness in the situation lies in the fact that a boiled egg only costs the ordinary citizen ten cents and it costs me almost its weight in gold.