The Goldfish | Page 9

ways is
a business necessity. Yet if I give two hundred and fifty dollars to a
relief fund I have an inflation of the heart and feel conscious of my

generosity.
I can frankly say, therefore, that so far as I am concerned my response
to the ordinary appeal for charity is purely perfunctory and largely, if
not entirely, dictated by policy; and the sum total of my charities on an
income of seventy-five thousand dollars a year is probably less than
fifteen hundred dollars, or about two per cent.
Yet, thinking it over dispassionately, I do not conclude from this that I
am an exceptionally selfish man. I believe I represent the average in
this respect. I always respond to minor calls in a way that pleases the
recipient and causes a genuine flow of satisfaction in my own breast. I
toss away nickels, dimes and quarters with prodigality; and if one of
the office boys feels out of sorts I send him off for a week's vacation on
full pay. I make small loans to seedy fellows who have known better
days and I treat the servants handsomely at Christmas.
I once sent a boy to college--that is, I promised him fifty dollars a year.
He died in his junior term, however. Sisters of Mercy, the postman, a
beggar selling pencils or shoelaces--almost anybody, in short, that
actually comes within range--can pretty surely count on something
from me. But I confess I never go out of my way to look for people in
need of help. I have not the time.
Several of the items in my budget, however, are absurdly low, for the
opera-box which, as it is, we share with several friends and which is
ours but once in two weeks, alone costs us twelve hundred dollars; and
my bill at the Ritz--where we usually dine before going to the theater or
sup afterward--is apt to be not less than one hundred dollars a month.
Besides, twenty-five hundred dollars does not begin to cover my actual
personal expenses; but as I am accustomed to draw checks against my
office account and thrust the money in my pocket, it is difficult to say
just what I do cost myself.
Moreover, a New York family like mine would have to keep
surprisingly well in order to get along with but two thousand dollars a
year for doctors. Even our dentist bills are often more than that. We do
not go to the most fashionable operators either. There does not seem to

be any particular way of finding out who the good ones are except by
experiment. I go to a comparatively cheap one. Last month he looked
me over, put in two tiny fillings, cleansed my teeth and treated my
gums. He only required my presence once for half an hour, once for
twenty minutes, and twice for ten minutes--on the last two occasions he
filched the time from the occupant of his other chair. My bill was
forty-two dollars. As he claims to charge a maximum rate of ten dollars
an hour--which is about the rate for ordinary legal services--I have
spent several hundred dollars' worth of my own time trying to figure it
all out. But this is nothing to the expense incident to the straightening
of children's teeth.
When I was a child teeth seemed to take care of themselves, but my
boy and girls were all obliged to spend several years with their small
mouths full of plates, wires and elastic bands. In each case the cost was
from eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars. A friend of mine with a
large family was compelled to lay out during the tooth-growing period
of his offspring over five thousand dollars a year for several years.
Their teeth are not straight at that.
Then, semioccasionally, weird cures arise and seize hold of the female
imagination and send our wives and daughters scurrying to the parlors
of fashionable specialists, who prescribe long periods of rest at
expensive hotels--a room in one's own house will not do--and strange
diets of mush and hot water, with periodical search parties, lighted by
electricity, through the alimentary canal.
One distinguished medico's discovery of the terra incognita of the
stomach has netted him, I am sure, a princely fortune. There seems to
be something peculiarly fascinating about the human interior. One of
our acquaintances became so interested in hers that she issued engraved
invitations for a fashionable party at which her pet doctor delivered a
lecture on the gastro-intestinal tract. All this comes high, and I have not
ventured to include the cost of such extravagances in my budget,
though my wife has taken cures six times in the last ten years, either at
home or abroad.
And who can prophesy the cost of