The Goldfish | Page 8

Travel--wife's annual spring trip to Paris 3,500 Opera, theater, music,
entertaining at restaurants, and so on 3,500 _____ Total $74,200

A fortune in itself, you may say! Yet judged by the standards of
expenditure among even the unostentatiously wealthy in New York it is
moderate indeed. A friend of mine who has only recently married
glanced over my schedule and said, "Why, it's ridiculous, old man! No
one could live in New York on any such sum."
Any attempt to "keep house" in the old-fashioned meaning of the
phrase would result in domestic disruption. No cook who was not
allowed to do the ordering would stay with us. It is hopeless to try to
save money in our domestic arrangements. I have endeavored to do so
once or twice and repented of my rashness. One cannot live in the city
without motors, and there is no object in living at all if one cannot keep
up a scale of living that means comfort and lack of worry in one's
household.
The result is that I am always pressed for money even on an income of
seventy-five thousand dollars. And every year I draw a little on my
capital. Sometimes a lucky stroke on the market or an unexpected fee
evens things up or sets me a little ahead; but usually January first sees
me selling a few bonds to meet an annual deficit. Needless to say, I pay
no personal taxes. If I did I might as well give up the struggle at once.
When I write it all down in cold words I confess it seems ridiculous.
Yet my family could not be happy living in any other way.
It may be remarked that the item for charity on the preceding schedule
is somewhat disproportionate to the amount of the total expenditure. I
offer no excuse or justification for this. I am engaged in an honest
exposition of fact--for my own personal satisfaction and profit, and for
what lessons others may be able to draw from it. My charities are
negligible.
The only explanation which suggests itself to my mind is that I lead so
circumscribed and guarded a life that these matters do not obtrude
themselves on me. I am not brought into contact with the maimed, the
halt and the blind; if I were I should probably behave toward them like
a gentleman. The people I am thrown with are all sleek and well fed;
but even among those of my friends who make a fad of charity I have
never observed any disposition to deprive themselves of luxuries for

the sake of others.
Outside of the really poor, is there such a thing as genuine charity
among us? The church certainly does not demand anything
approximating self-sacrifice. A few dollars will suffice for any appeal. I
am not a professing Christian, but the church regards me tolerantly and
takes my money when it can get it. But how little it gets! I give
frequently--almost constantly--but in most instances my giving is less
an act of benevolence than the payment of a tax upon my social
standing. I am compelled to give. If I could not be relied upon to take
tickets to charity entertainments and to add my name to the
subscription lists for hospitals and relief funds I should lose my caste.
One cannot be too cold a proposition. I give to these things grudgingly
and because I cannot avoid it.
Of course the aggregate amount thus disposed of is really not large and
I never feel the loss of it. Frankly, people of my class rarely
inconvenience themselves for the sake of anybody, whether their own
immediate friends or the sick, suffering and sorrowful. It is trite to say
that the clerk earning one thousand dollars deprives himself of more in
giving away fifty than the man with an income of twenty thousand
dollars in giving away five thousand. It really costs the clerk more to go
down into his pocket for that sum than the rich man to draw his check
for those thousands.
Where there is necessity for generous and immediate relief I
occasionally, but very rarely, contribute two hundred and fifty or five
hundred dollars. My donation is always known and usually is noticed
with others of like amount in the daily papers. I am glad to give the
money and I have a sensation of making a substantial sacrifice in doing
so. Obviously, however, it has cost me really nothing! I spend two
hundred and fifty dollars or more every week or so on an evening's
entertainment for fifteen or twenty of my friends and think nothing of it.
It is part of my manner of living, and my manner of living is an
advertisement of my success--and advertising in various subtle