little laced hat. To these people domestic
honour and social salvation lie in the form and
figure of the person who opens the door, and in
the names they give to those who serve them.
Thus, they speak of their slipshod workhouse
girl as "my maid;" and throw dust in your
eyes by the grandeur of their vocabulary. A
maid-of-all-work, on ten pounds a year and find
herself, is "my cook;" and the handy man
about the place who comes to do odd jobs as he
is wanted, and who scarcely knows a potato
from an artichoke, is "my groom," or "my
gardener," according to the occasion on hand.
Their margin goes to keeping up appearances
in live kitchen-stuff, poor bodies! and they do
not think they could employ it better.

Others keep up as unremunerative an
appearance in other directions, and at a more
tremendous application of their scanty margin.
These are the people who go to second-rate
evening parties in private broughams, while
their friends, with thrice their incomes, are
content to go in common cabs. I know that it
is only good policy to go to certain grand houses
carefully appointed: or if unable to compass
these careful appointments, then not to go at
all; but I am speaking now of second-rate
houses, where neither hosts nor guests are of
any standing; but where people of this kind
think they must go with a splash and a dash,
as if their income were generous enough to cover
a multitude of false pretences. Heaven and
their creditors know how poor they are; cellar
and larder and wardrobe, each witnesses the
same sad fact; landlord and tax-gatherer could
attest it; but, if they go out, they say, they
will go as they ought; so they spend fifteen
shillings on a private brougham, and think their
margin justifies the outlay.

Others keep up appearances and make a
necessary of the superfluous in giving parties
—parties of the same stamp as the
bankrupt's brougham which comes to them. They
pinch for six days in the week that they may
have an evening reception on the seventh; or
they pinch all the year for the annual ball or
dinner which it has so long been their custom
to give—a custom begun, perhaps, in brighter
days and when they had a margin worth speaking
of. But they forget that old copy-book axiom
about circumstances altering cases, and go on
under Z as they had gone on under A, without
reflecting that the whole alphabet lies between. I
know nothing more melancholy than these shady
parties given by people with small margins.
One cannot refuse to see the numerous wants
meeting one at every turn—the drawing-room
so sadly needing paint and paper, that worn
oilcloth in the hall, that ragged carpet in the
dining-room; one cannot pretend for a moment
that these cakes, and custards, and sherries,
and clarets, poor as they may all be, are out of a
superfluity which they by no means exhaust.
One feels as if one is answerable somehow for
the family needs, by thus assisting at the mal-
appropriation of that modest margin; one longs
to say, "Repair and renew before you attempt
to entertain;" but what can the most outspoken,
among us do! It is their way of viewing life,
their idea of the best things and the most
necessary to be observed; and as it is a margin,
no matter whence filched, they surely have a
right to dispose of it as they like; and we can
only lament at what seems to us mal-appropriation,
and wish that we could order all things
according to our own individual liking. This is
merely human nature. Do we not all wish we
could order our neighbours' lives as we think
best, and manipulate the whole moral and social
world, until it took the form which alone
seems true and beautiful to our souls?

Then there are folks who put every available
farthing of margin into dress. Whatever else
is wanting they are always in the height of the
fashion, always have irreproachable gloves and
dainty boots, always look well got up and
handsomely attired. It is a marvel how they do it.
They seem to heap a fortune on their backs;.
but ten to one if you ask them, they will make
out that they spend less than you, in your homely
last year's russet, while they are flourishing
about in gorgeous apparel which makes peacocks
themselves look dowdy. I have known a great
many lavish ladies of small means and narrow
margins, who have gravely assured me that
their wardrobes cost less than those of certain
of their friends notorious for their constancy
to old clothes. It is all in the method, they
say, simpering; and you are free to believe in
that magic method, if you like, and to wish
that you could find the way to satisfactory
imitation. Still, you know that silk and broad
cloth and gloves and velvets are not to be had
for the value of so many old songs; and you
can pretty well approximate their cost. Granting
any amount of personal luck, by which a
shilling's worth can be bought for sixpence;.
granting any latitude you like for trade price and
warehouse favour, there always remains the
sixpence; and even trade price and warehouse
favour leave a hard core of substance that has
to be paid for. No, I never for myself heard
an explanation of the mystery of good dress
with narrow margins that was worth listening
to, and I, for one, am content to let the mystery
remain where it is. Indeed, one would be
almost sorry to have a vulgar explanation of a
standing miracle; and one would rather gape
at the marvel of how people without twopence
halfpenny a year can dress with those who
have fivepence or even sixpence, and yet not
come into the bankruptcy court before their
time, than learn the secret of the shifts by
which it is done. Mr. Trollope, in one of his
novels, I think it is Framley Parsonage, speaks
of this unfailing margin for personal needs and
pleasures to be found bordering the narrowest
income of certain people. Men who are
being chased by duns, and whose next lines
will fall in Whitecross-street, have always
money for cabs and cigars and theatres and
railway fares, first-class. It is only simpletons
who cannot compass unnecessary expenses; and
who cares for the sorrows of simpletons? Who