ceived: they can banish the
decanter, change the dishes for a bit of bacon, make a treat out of a
rasher and eggs, and the world is none the wiser all the while. But the
tradesman, the doctor, the attorney, and the trader, cannot make the
change so quietly, and unseen. The accursed wine, which is a sort of
criterion of the style of living, a sort of _scale_ to the _plan_, a
sort of _key_ to the _tune_; this is the thing to banish first of all;
because all the rest follow, and come down to their proper level in a
short time. The accursed decanter cries footman or waiting maid, puts
bells to the side of the wall, screams aloud for carpets; and when I am
asked, 'Lord, _what_ is a glass of wine?' my answer is, that, in this
country, it is _everything_; it is the pitcher of the key; it demands
all the other unnecessary expenses; it is injurious to health, and must
be injurious, every bottle of wine that is drunk containing a certain
portion of ardent spirits, besides other drugs deleterious in their
nature; and, of all the friends to the doctors, this fashionable
beverage is the greatest. And, which adds greatly to the folly, or, I
should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties themselves,
nine times out of ten, do not drink it by _choice_; do not like it; do
not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be
seen even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I
am writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who
daily have wine upon their tables, and who _drink_ it too, merely
because their own servants should not suspect them to be poor, and not
deem them to be genteel; and thus families by thousands are ruined, only
because they are ashamed to be thought poor.

59. There is no shame belonging to poverty, which frequently arises from
the virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, indeed, as
from vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as
the Scripture tells us, that we are not to 'despise the poor _because_
he is poor'; so we ought not to honour the rich because he is rich. The
true way is, to take a fair survey of the character of a man as depicted
in his conduct, and to respect him, or despise him, according to a due
estimate of that character. No country upon earth exhibits so many, as
this, of those fatal terminations of life, called suicides. These arise,
in nine instances out of ten, from this very source. The vic