The Goldfish | Page 6

the campus. We are a mutual-admiration society.
I am always picked by my classmates to preside at our reunions, for I
am the conspicuous, shining example of success among them. They are
proud of me, without envy. "Well, old man," they say, "you've certainly
made a name for yourself!" They take it for granted that, because I have
made money and they read my wife's name in the society columns of
the New York papers, I must be completely satisfied.
And in a way I am satisfied with having achieved that material success
which argues the possession of brains and industry; but the encomiums
of the high-school principal and the congratulations of my college
mates, sincere and well-meaning as they are, no longer quicken my
blood; for I know that they are based on a total ignorance of the person
they seek to honor. They see a heavily built, well-groomed,
shrewd-looking man, with clear-cut features, a ready smile, and a sort
of brusque frankness that seems to them the index of an honest heart.
They hear him speak in a straightforward, direct way about the "Old
Home," and the "Dear Old College," and "All Our Friends"--quite
touching at times, I assure you--and they nod and say, "Good fellow,
this! No frills--straight from the heart! No wonder he has got on in the

city! Sterling chap! Hurrah!"
Perhaps, after all, the best part of me comes out on these occasions. But
it is not the me that I have worked for half a century to build up; it is
rather what is left of the me that knelt at my mother's side forty years
ago. Yet I have no doubt that, should these good parents of mine see
how I live in New York, they would only be the more convinced of the
greatness of my success--the success to achieve which I have given the
unremitting toil of thirty years.
* * * * *
And as I now clearly see that the results of this striving and the objects
of my ambition have been largely, if not entirely, material, I shall take
the space to set forth in full detail just what this material success
amounts to, in order that I may the better determine whether it has been
worth struggling for. Not only are the figures that follow accurate and
honest, but I am inclined to believe that they represent the very
minimum of expenditure in the class of New York families to which
mine belongs. They may at first sight seem extravagant; but if the
reader takes the trouble to verify them--as I have done, alas! many
times to my own dismay and discouragement--he will find them
economically sound. This, then, is the catalogue of my success.
I possess securities worth about seven hundred and fifty thousand
dollars and I earn at my profession from thirty to forty thousand dollars
a year. This gives me an annual income of from sixty-five thousand to
seventy-five thousand dollars. In addition I own a house on the sunny
side of an uptown cross street near Central Park which cost me, fifteen
years ago, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and is now worth
two hundred and fifty thousand. I could sell it for that. The taxes alone
amount to thirty-two hundred dollars--the repairs and annual
improvements to about twenty-five hundred. As the interest on the
value of the property would be twelve thousand five hundred dollars it
will be seen that merely to have a roof over my head costs me annually
over eighteen thousand dollars.
My electric-light bills are over one hundred dollars a month. My coal

and wood cost me even more, for I have two furnaces to heat the house,
an engine to pump the water, and a second range in the laundry. One
man is kept busy all the time attending to these matters and cleaning
the windows. I pay my butler eighty dollars a month; my second man
fifty-five; my valet sixty; my cook seventy; the two kitchen maids
twenty-five each; the head laundress forty-five; the two second
laundresses thirty-five each; the parlor maid thirty; the two housemaids
twenty-five each; my wife's maid thirty-five; my daughter's maid thirty;
the useful man fifty; the pantry maid twenty-five. My house payroll is,
therefore, six hundred and fifty dollars a month, or seventy-eight
hundred a year.
We could not possibly get along without every one of these servants.
To discharge one of them would mean that the work would have to be
done in some other way at a vastly greater expense. Add this to the
yearly sum represented by the house itself, together with the cost of
heating and lighting, and you have twenty-eight thousand four hundred
dollars.
Unforeseen extras make this, in fact, nearer thirty thousand dollars.
There is