and dessert with duns besieging your gate.
People do not really care about these dinners.
When Paterfamilias is in the City he will dine
off a chop and be satisfied; but at home he
must do the grand. It is a mere habit with
some; with others it is ostentation and pretence.
Besides, life is not all for meat and drink.
Banyan days are good for the health; the
occasional fast gives zest to the periodical feast.

Parties are madness. More people are ruined
by parties than by anything else. A three
hundred a year establishment cannot afford to
call in the confectioner more than once a year.
Indeed, I doubt if it can bear up against that
expensive administrator at all. If you have a
grand party of this kind, with an ornamental
supper, and wine and waiters, you cannot do
much less than the man who counts his income
by thousands. Your guests eat and drink as
much as his guests, and you cannot offer them
cheap pheasants and cheap champagne. The
great error which people with small incomes
commit, is in thinking that they are bound to
do the same as their friends and neighbours.
What nonsense this is! Smith and Jones mix
in society on the same footing because they are
both gentlemen, but if Smith has a thousand a
year and Jones three hundred, is it reasonable
that Jones should be expected to give as
grand parties as Smith? It is not reasonable.
No one expects it; and when Jones gives
his grand parties, the guests roll home in
their carriages and speculate upon their host's
speedy bankruptcy. But there is a kind of
party-giving practised by humble folks, which,
though very unpretending, is quite as expensive.
You will hear modest householders say, "Drop
in any evening and smoke a pipe with me; I
don't pretend to give wine, and that sort of
thing, but I can offer you a bit of supper and a
glass of grog." Drop in any time, according to
invitation, and you will find half a dozen fellows
smoking pipes and drinking humble gin-and-
water. But gin, though humble, costs money,
and half a dozen fellows will drink a lot of it,
and they generally stay to supper and drink
more gin; and the humble party costs the host
a pound at the very least. He can't afford it.
He wouldn't do it if he had to put his hand in
his pocket for the money every time a bottle of
gin is wanted. But he takes credit, and has only
to send for it. You think me a shabby fellow
because I don't keep open house in the same
fashion. Very well; have that opinion; but I
promise you I will not get into debt and come and
borrow money of you. Your liberal friend will,
and you might as well pay him for his entertainment
at the time. I don't say that a man ought
not to give parties. Parties are very pleasant
when everything is paid for, and you can afford to
give them; but a man with three hundred a year
can afford to entertain his friends only when he
has the spare cash in his purse to defray the
expense. It is bad enough to take credit for the
necessaries of life; but to run a bill for champagne
and trifle is an offence that merits whipping.

A select committee of noblemen's stewards
assembled, not very long ago, to furnish
estimates of the expense of keeping up a first-rate
establishment in first-rate style. They all hit
close to the same mark; one mentioned forty-
two thousand, another forty-five, and another—
this being the highest—forty-seven thousand.
It was eventually agreed that a nobleman could
live in first-rate style, keep his town and
country houses, his horses and hounds, and
entertain his friends magnificently, for forty-five
thousand pounds a year, provided—there was a
proviso even in this case—provided that the
income were carefully and prudently managed.
The stewards would not answer for the
consequences if their masters went to work
recklessly, spending right and left, and indulging
their fancies without regard to the limit
prescribed by their means. The truth is, that
every income, whatever its amount, whether
three hundred or forty-five thousand, requires
to be managed with care and prudence.
Everything is in degree. Tastes and habits advance
with the amount of income, and the man who
lives above his three hundred will find it just
as easy to live above forty thousand. Extravagance
can always find a way of indulging itself;
recklessness will squander even millions. As a
rule, however, noblemen with thousands a year
are much more careful than the little people
with a few hundreds. In many great houses
there is a steward, or an accountant, who makes
out the bills every month, and at regular
intervals places a balance-sheet of assets and
expenditure before his master. This steward is
very often a privileged person, who will not
scruple to tell my lord and my lady that they
are going too fast, that they must forego certain
pleasures, live more quietly, and retrench. It
is generally the small people who live without
check or control. And among all the small
people there is no more aggravating instance of
extravagance and unthrift than that of the man
who, with an income varying from eight
hundred to a thousand a year, is always needy,
always borrowing money, always involved with
Jew bill-discounters and sheriffs' officers. The
thousand a year people seem to be the most
unfortunate of all: they are always in a mess.
There must be something particularly awkward
about the sum. Judging from all I have seen,
it is both too little and too much. I imagine
the case to be this:—when a man's income is
under a thousand, he is content with a genteel
house at sixty pounds a year and two or three
female servants; when it reaches a thousand,
he feels himself justified in taking a mansion
and setting up a man-servant and a carriage.
Now, in London, a thousand a year won't bear
this. It won't pay for the flash and show
attendant upon livery servants and a carriage.
As a rule, if a man with a thousand a year give
outward indications in his dress and habits of
being above the ordinary run of people you
meet in the streets, you may be sure he is
overrunning the constable. A thousand a year,
to be really comfortable and well off, must walk
a good deal, ride a good deal on the top of the