e out ahead?"

There is no one cause to-day of more financial embarrassment, and of
more dishonesties, than this determination, at all hazards, to live as
well as or better than other people. There are persons who will risk
their eternity upon one fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the
splendors of heaven to get another trinket.

"My house is too small." "But," says some one, "you cannot pay for a
larger." "Never mind that; my friends have a better residence, and so
will I." "A dress of that pattern I must have. I cannot afford it by
a great deal; but who cares for that? My neighbor had one from that
pattern, and I must have one." There are scores of men in the dungeons
of the penitentiary, who risked honor, business,--everything, in the
effort to shine like others. Though the heavens fall, they must be "in
the fashion."

The most famous frauds of the day have resulted from this feeling. It
keeps hundreds of men struggling for their commercial existence. The
trouble is that some are caught and incarcerated, if their larceny
be small. If it be great, they escape, and build their castle on the
Rhine. Men go into jail, not because they steal, but because they did
not steal enough.

Again: excessive fashion makes people unnatural and untrue. It is a
factory from which has come forth more hollow pretences, and unmeaning
flatteries, and hypocrisies, than the Lowell Mills ever turned out
shawls and garments.

Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has made society insincere.
You know not what to believe. When people ask you to come, you do
not know whether or not they want you to come. When they send their
regards, you do not know whether it is an expression of their heart,
or an external civility. We have learned to take almost everything at
a discount. Word is sent, "Not at home," when they are only too lazy
to dress themselves. They say, "The furnace has just gone out," when
in truth they have had no fire in it all winter. They apologize
for the unusual barrenness of their table, when they never live any
better. They decry their most luxurious entertainments, to win a
shower of approval. They apologize for their appearance, as though it
were unusual, when always at home they look just so. They would make
you believe that some nice sketch on the wall was the work of a master
painter. "It was an heir-loom, and once hung on the walls of a castle;
and a duke gave it to their grandfather." People who will lie about