Excessive fashion is productive of a most ruinous strife. The
expenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors
have, not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great
anxiety is as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly
equipage. The weapons used in the warfare of social life are not
Minie rifles, and Dahlgren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs
and mirrors, and vases, and Gobelins, and Axminsters. Many household
establishments are like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost
strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific explosion. "Who cares,"
say they, "if we only come out ahead?"
There is no one cause to-day of more financial embarrassment, and of
more dishonesties, than this determination, at all hazards, to live as
well as or better than other people. There are persons who will risk
their eternity upon one fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the
splendors of heaven to get another trinket.
"My house is too small." "But," says some one, "you cannot pay for a
larger.
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