sets
herself to make the most of her small income.

"So the woman who has her definite allowance for housekeeping finds at
once a hundred questions set at rest. Before it was not clear to her
why she should not 'go and do likewise' in relation to every purchase
made by her next neighbor. Now, there is a clear logic of proportion.
Certain things are evidently not to be thought of, though next
neighbors do have them; and we must resign ourselves to find some
other way of living."

"My dear," said my wife, "I think there is a peculiar temptation in a
life organized as ours is in America. There are here no settled
classes, with similar ratios of income. Mixed together in the same
society, going to the same parties, and blended in daily neighborly
intercourse, are families of the most opposite extremes in point of
fortune. In England there is a very well understood expression, that
people should not dress or live above their station; in America none
will admit that they have any particular station, or that they can
live above it. The principle of democratic equality unites in society
people of the most diverse positions and means.

"Here, for instance, is a family like Dr. Selden's: an old and highly
respected one, with an income of only two or three thousand; yet they
are people universally sought for in society, and mingle in all the
intercourse of life with merchant millionaires whose incomes are from
ten to thirty thousand. Their sons and daughters go to the same
schools, the same parties, and are thus constantly meeting upon terms
of social equality.

"Now it seems to me that our danger does not lie in the great and
evident expenses of our richer friends. We do not expect to have
pineries, graperies, equipages, horses, diamonds,--we say openly and
of course that we do not. Still, our expenses are constantly increased
by the proximity of these things, unless we understand ourselves
better than most people do. We don't, of course, expect to get a
fifteen-hundred-dollar Cashmere, like Mrs. So-and-so, but we begin to
look at hundred-dollar shawls and nibble about the hook. We don't
expect sets of diamonds, but a diamond ring, a pair of solitaire
diamond ear-rings, begin to be speculated about among the young people
as among possibilities. We don't expect to carpet our house with
Axminster and hang our windows with damask, but at least we must have
Brussels and brocatelle,--it _would not do_ not to. And so we go on
get