two thousand dollars. Yet the lower part of
her house was furnished with as much splendor as we usually find among
the wealthiest. The whole two thousand had been expended upon Brussels
carpets, alabaster vases, mahogany chairs, and marble tables. I
afterwards learned that the more useful household utensils had been
forgotten; and that, a few weeks after her wedding, she was actually
obliged to apply to her husband for money to purchase baskets, iron
spoons, clothes-lines, &c.; and her husband, made irritable by the
want of money, pettishly demanded why she had bought so many things
they did not want. Did the doctor gain any patients, or she a single
friend, by offering their visiters water in richly-cut glass tumblers,
or serving them with costly damask napkins, instead of plain soft
towels? No; their foolish vanity made them less happy, and no more
respectable.
Had the young lady been content with Kidderminster carpets, and
tasteful vases of her own making, she might have put _one_ thousand
dollars at interest; and had she obtained six per cent., it would have
clothed her as well as the wife of any man, who depends merely upon
his own industry, ought to be clothed.
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