your neck that
you won't get any real satisfaction out of your gymnastics. You've got
to live on a rump-steak basis when you're alone, so that you can
appear to be on a quail-on-toast basis when you have company. And
while they're eating your quail and betting that they're cold-storage
birds, they'll be whispering to each other that the butcher told their
cook that you lived all last week on a soup-bone and two pounds of
Hamburger steak. Your wife must hog it around the house in an old
wrapper, because she's got to have two or three of those dresses that
come high on the bills and low on the shoulders, and when she wears
'em the neighbors are going to wonder how much you're short in your
accounts. And if you've been raised a shouting Methodist and been used
to hollering your satisfaction in a good hearty Glory! or a
Hallelujah! you've got to quit it and go to one of those churches
where the right answer to the question, "What is the chief end of
man?" is "Dividend," and where they think you're throwing a fit and
sick the sexton on to you if you forget yourself and whoop it up a
little when your religion gets to working.

Then, if you do have any children, you can't send them to a plain
public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, because
they've got to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin,
hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich
children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but
they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where
they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora
billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front
of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my
experience that it takes a good four-year course in snubbing before
you can graduate a first-class snob.

Then, when you've sweat along at it for a dozen years or so, you'll
wake up some morning and discover that your appearances haven't
deceived any one but yourself. A man who tries that game is a good
deal like the fellow who puts on a fancy vest over a dirty shirt--he's
the only person in the world who can't see the egg-spots under his
chin. Of course, there isn't any real danger of your family's wearing
a false front while I'm alive, because I believe Helen's got too much
sense to stand for anything of the sort; but if she should, you can
expect the old man around with his megaphone to whisper the real
figures