lly sound. This, then, is the catalogue of my success.

I possess securities worth about seven hundred and fifty thousand
dollars and I earn at my profession from thirty to forty thousand
dollars a year. This gives me an annual income of from sixty-five
thousand to seventy-five thousand dollars. In addition I own a house on
the sunny side of an uptown cross street near Central Park which cost
me, fifteen years ago, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and is
now worth two hundred and fifty thousand. I could sell it for that. The
taxes alone amount to thirty-two hundred dollars--the repairs and annual
improvements to about twenty-five hundred. As the interest on the value
of the property would be twelve thousand five hundred dollars it will be
seen that merely to have a roof over my head costs me annually over
eighteen thousand dollars.

My electric-light bills are over one hundred dollars a month. My coal
and wood cost me even more, for I have two furnaces to heat the house,
an engine to pump the water, and a second range in the laundry. One man
is kept busy all the time attending to these matters and cleaning the
windows. I pay my butler eighty dollars a month; my second man
fifty-five; my valet sixty; my cook seventy; the two kitchen maids
twenty-five each; the head laundress forty-five; the two second
laundresses thirty-five each; the parlor maid thirty; the two housemaids
twenty-five each; my wife's maid thirty-five; my daughter's maid thirty;
the useful man fifty; the pantry maid twenty-five. My house payroll is,
therefore, six hundred and fifty dollars a month, or seventy-eight
hundred a year.

We could not possibly get along without every one of these servants. To
discharge one of them would mean that the work would have to be done in
some other way at a vastly greater expense. Add this to the yearly sum
represented by the house itself, together with the cost of heating and
lighting, and you have twenty-eight thousand four hundred dollars.

Unforeseen extras make this, in fact, nearer thirty thousand dollars.
There is usually some alteration under way, a partition to be taken out,
a hall to be paneled, a parquet floor to be relaid, a new sort of
heating apparatus to be installed, and always plumbing. Generally, also,
at least one room has to be done over and refurnished every year, and
this is an expensive matter. The guest room, recently refurnished in
this way at my daughter's request, cost thirty-seven