conveniences.  But it proves more expensive to those who go into the country to want them there than it did to have them where they abound.  They are not to be had in the country at any price,—­water, gas, fuel, food, attendance, amusement, locomotion in all weathers; but such a moderate measure of them as a city-bred family cannot live without involves so great an expense, that the expected economy of life in the country to those not actually brought up there turns out a delusion.  The expensiveness of life in the city comes of the generous and grand scale on which it there proceeds, not from the superior cost of the necessaries or comforts of life.  They are undoubtedly cheaper in the city, all things considered, than anywhere in the country.  Where everything is to be had, in the smallest or the largest quantities,—­where every form of service can be commanded at a moment’s notice,—­where the wit, skill, competition of a country are concentrated upon the furnishing of all commodities at the most taking rates,—­there prices will, of course, be most reasonable; and the expensiveness of such communities, we repeat, is entirely due to the abundant wealth which makes such enormous demands and secures such various comforts and luxuries;—­in short, it is the high standard of living, not the cost of the necessaries of life.  This high standard is, of course, an evil to those whose social ambition drives them to a rivalry for which they are not prepared.  But no special pity is due to hardships self-imposed by pride and folly.  The probability is, that, proportioned to their income from labor, the cost of living in the city, for the bulk of its population, is lighter, their degree of comfort considered, than in the country.  And for the wealthy class of society, no doubt, on the whole, economy is served by living in the city.  Our most expensive class is that which lives in the country after the manner of the city.

A literary man, of talents and thorough respectability, lately informed us, that, after trying all places, cities, villages, farmhouses, boarding-houses, hotels, taverns, he had discovered that keeping house in New York was the cheapest way to live,—­vastly the cheapest, if the amount of convenience and comfort was considered,—­and absolutely cheapest in fact.  To be sure, being a bachelor, his housekeeping was done in a single room, the back-room of a third-story, in a respectable and convenient house and neighborhood.  His rent was ninety-six dollars a year.  His expenses of every other kind, (clothing excepted,) one dollar a week.  He could not get his chop or steak cooked well enough, nor his coffee made right, until he took them in hand himself,—­nor his bed made, nor his room cleaned.  His conveniences were incredibly great.  He cooked by alcohol, and expected to warm himself the winter through on two gallons of alcohol at seventy-five cents a gallon.  This admirable housekeeping is equalled in economy only by that of a millionnaire, a New-Yorker, and a bachelor also, whose accounts, all accurately kept by his own hand, showed, after death, that (1st) his own living, (2d) his support of religion, (3d) his charities, (4th) his gifts to a favorite niece, had not averaged, for twenty years, over five hundred dollars.  Truly, the city is a cheap place to live in, for those who know how!  And what place is cheap for those who do not?