t said at all. And thus to-day,
quite out of order, but in very close connection with another part of
our subject, I am going to tell you what I was thinking on Friday
evening last, in Covent Garden Theater, as I was looking, and not
laughing, at the pantomime of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.'

When you begin seriously to consider the question referred to in my
second letter, of the essential, and in the outcome inviolable,
connection between quantity of wages, and quantity of work, you will
see that "wages" in the full sense don't mean "pay" merely, but the
reward, whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of
various other advantages, which a man is meant by Providence to get
during life, for work well done. Even limiting the idea to "pay," the
question is not so much what quantity of coin you get, as--what you
can get for it when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good pay
or not, depends wholly on what a "shilling's worth" is; that is to
say, what quantity of the things you want may be had for a shilling.
And that again depends, and a great deal more than that depends, on
what you _do_ want. If only drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay
may be enough for you; if you want good meat and good clothes, you
must have larger wage; if clean rooms and fresh air, larger still, and
so on. You say, perhaps, "every one wants these better things." So far
from that, a wholesome taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of
the final attainments of humanity. There are now not many European
gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a pure and right love
of fresh air. They would put the filth of tobacco even into the first
breeze of a May morning.

19. But there are better things even than these, which one may want.
Grant that one has good food, clothes, lodging, and breathing, is that
all the pay one ought to have for one's work? Wholesome means of
existence and nothing more? Enough, perhaps, you think, if everybody
could get these. It may be so; I will not, at this moment, dispute it;
nevertheless, I will boldly say that you should sometimes want more
than these; and for one of many things more, you should want
occasionally to be amused!

You know, the upper classes, most of them, want to be amused all day
long. They think

"One moment _un_amused a misery
Not made for feeble men."

Perhaps you have been in the habit of despising them for this; and
thinking how much worthier and nobler it