dispassionate consideration of the matter I hazard the sincere
opinion that my actual disbursements during the last ten years have
averaged not less than one hundred thousand dollars a year. However, let
us be conservative and stick to our original figure of seventy-five
thousand dollars. It costs me, therefore, almost exactly two hundred
dollars a day to support five persons. We all of us complain of what is
called the high cost of living, but men of my class have no real
knowledge of what it costs them to live.

The necessaries are only a drop in the bucket. It is hardly worth while
to bother over the price of rib roast a pound, or fresh eggs a dozen,
when one is smoking fifty-cent cigars. Essentially it costs me as much
to lunch off a boiled egg, served in my dining room at home, as to carve
the breast off a canvasback. At the end of the month my bills would not
show the difference. It is the overhead--or, rather, in housekeeping,
the underground--charge that counts. That boiled egg or the canvasback
represents a running expense of at least a hundred dollars a day. Slight
variations in the cost of foodstuffs or servants' wages amount to
practically nothing.

And what do I get for my two hundred dollars a day and my seventy-five
thousand dollars a year that the other fellow does not enjoy for, let us
say, half the money? Let us readjust the budget with an idea to
ascertaining on what a family of five could live in luxury in the city
of New York a year. I could rent a good house for five thousand dollars
and one in the country for two thousand dollars; and I would have no
real-estate taxes. I could keep eight trained servants for three
thousand dollars and reduce the cost of my supplies to five thousand
almost without knowing it. Of course my light and heat would cost me
twelve hundred dollars and my automobile twenty-five hundred. My wife,
daughters and son ought to be able to manage to dress on five thousand
dollars, among them. I could give away fifteen hundred dollars and allow
one thousand for doctors' bills, fifteen hundred for my own expenses,
and still have twenty-three hundred for pleasure--and be living on
thirty thousand dollars a year in luxury.

I could even then entertain, go to the theater, and occasionally take my
friends to a restaurant. And what would I surrender? My saddle-horses,
my extra motor, my pretentious houses, my opera box, my wife's annual
spending bout in Paris--that is about all. And I