Occupations > Frugal housewife

MODERATE FORTUNE. 175
Luxuries are cheaper now than necessa¬
ries were a few years since; yet it is a
lamentable fact, that it costs more to live
now than it did formerly. When silk was
six shillings per yard, seven or eight yards
sufficed for a dress ; now it is two or three
shillings, sixteen or twenty yards will hardly
satisfy the dress-maker.
If this extravagance were confined to the
wealthiest classes, it would be productive of
more good than evil. But if the rich have a
new dress every fortnight, people of mode¬
rate fortune will have one every month.
In this way, finery becomes the standard of
respectability ; and a man’s cloth is of more
consequence than his character.
Men of fixed salaries spend every farthing
of their income, and then leave their chil¬
dren to depend on the precarious charity and
reluctant friendship of a world they have
wasted their substance to please. Men who
rush into enterprise and speculation keep
up their credit by splendour; and should
they sink, they and their families carry with
them extravagant habits to corrode their
spirits with discontent, perchance to tempt
them into crime. “ I know we are extrava¬
gant,” said one of my acquaintance, the
other day ; “ but how can I help it 2 My
husband does not like to see his wife and
daughters dress more meanly than those with
whom they associate.” “Then, my dear lady,