e is coming to us so
increasingly in every manner of reproduction that we allege the
monuments almost in vain. The very ruins of the past are now so
accurately copied in various sorts of portable plasticity that we may
know them here with nearly the same emotion as on their own ground. The
education of their daughters which once availed with mothers willing to
sacrifice themselves and their husbands to the common good, no longer
avails. The daughters know the far better time they will have at home,
and refuse to go, as far as daughters may, and in our civilization this,
you know, is very far. But it was always held a prime reason and
convincing argument that Dresden, Berlin, Paris, Rome, and even London,
were so much cheaper than New York that it was a waste of money to stay
at home."

"Well, wasn't it?" we impatiently demanded.

"I will not say, for I needn't, as yet. There were always at the same
time philosophers who contended that if we lived in those capitals as we
lived at home, they would be dearer than New York. But what is really
relevant is the question whether New York isn't cheaper now."

"We thought it had got past a question with you. We thought you began by
saying that New York _is_ cheaper."

"I can't believe I was so crude," the Howadji returned, with a fine
annoyance. "That is the conclusion you have characteristically jumped to
without looking before you leap. I was going to approach the fact much
more delicately, and I don't know but what by your haste you have
shattered my ideal of the conditions. But I'll own that the great
stumbling-block to my belief that the means of living in New York are
cheaper than in the European capitals is that the house rents here are
so incomparably higher than they are there. But I must distinguish and
say that I mean flat-rents, for, oddly enough, flats are much dearer
than houses. You can get a very pretty little house, in a fair quarter,
with plenty of light and a good deal of sun, for two-thirds and
sometimes one-half what you must pay for a flat with the same number of
rooms, mostly dark or dim, and almost never sunny. Of course, a house is
more expensive and more difficult to 'run,' but even with the cost of
the greater service and of the furnace heat the rent does not reach that
of a far less wholesome and commodious flat. There is one thing to be
said in favor of a flat, however, and that is the women are in favor of
it. The feminine instinct is averse to s