ve
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-millionnaires 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, begins 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 getting hundreds
of things that we don't need, that have no real value except that they
soothe our self-love,--and for these inferior articles we pay a higher
proportion of our income than our rich neighbor does for his better
ones. Nothing is uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls; and yet a young
man just entering business will spend an eighth of a year's income to
put one on his wife, and when he has put it there it only serves as a
constant source of disquiet,--for now that the door is opened, and
Cashmere shawls are possible, she is consumed with envy at the superior
ones constantly sported around her. So also with point-lace, velvet
dresses, and hundreds of things of that sort, which belong to a certain
rate of income, and are absurd below it."

"And yet, mamma, I heard Aunt Easygo say that velvet, point-lace, and
Cashmere were the cheapest finery that could be bought, because they
lasted a lifetime."

"Aunt Easygo speaks from an income of ten thousand a year; th