s who play at being ladies, too many clerks who act the
club-man or sportsman; and among those in easy circumstances and the
rich, are too many people who forget that what they possess could serve
a better purpose than procuring pleasure for themselves, only to find in
the end that one never has enough. Our needs, in place of the servants
that they should be, have become a turbulent and seditious crowd, a
legion of tyrants in miniature. A man enslaved to his needs may best be
compared to a bear with a ring in its nose, that is led about and made
to dance at will. The likeness is not flattering, but you will grant
that it is true. It is in the train of their own needs that so many of
those men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress, and I don't
know what else. They cannot take a step without asking themselves if it
might not irritate their masters. How many men and women have gone on
and on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too many
needs and could not resign themselves to simple living. There are many
guests in the chambers of Mazas who could give us much light on the
subject of too exigent needs.

Let me tell you the story of an excellent man whom I knew. He tenderly
loved his wife and children, and they all lived together, in France, in
comfort and plenty, but with little of the luxury the wife coveted.
Always short of money, though with a little management he might have
been at ease, he ended by exiling himself to a distant colony, leaving
his wife and children in the mother country. I don't know how the poor
man can feel off there; but his family has a finer apartment, more
beautiful toilettes, and what passes for an equipage. At present they
are perfectly contented, but soon they will be used to this
luxury--rudimentary after all. Then Madam will find her furniture common
and her equipage mean. If this man loves his wife--and that cannot be
doubted--he will migrate to the moon if there is hope of a larger
stipend. In other cases the roles are reversed, and the wife and
children are sacrificed to the ravenous needs of the head of the family,
whom an irregular life, play, and countless other costly follies have
robbed of all dignity. Between his appetites and his role of father he
has decided for the former, and he slowly drifts toward the most abject
egoism.

This forgetfulness of all responsibility, this gradual benumbing of
noble feeling, is not alone to be found among pleasure-seek