I allow my wife five thousand dollars; my daughters three thousand each; and my son, who is not entirely independent, twenty-five hundred.  This is supposed to cover everything; but it does not—­it barely covers their bodies.  I myself expend, having no vices, only about twenty-five hundred dollars.

The bills of our family doctor, the specialists and the dentist are never less than a thousand dollars, and that is a minimum.  They would probably average more than double that.

Our spring trip to Paris, for rest and clothing, has never cost me less than thirty-five hundred dollars, and when it comes to less than five thousand it is inevitably a matter of mutual congratulation.

Our special entertaining, our opera box, the theater and social frivolities aggregate no inconsiderable sum, which I will not overestimate at thirty-five hundred dollars.

Our miscellaneous subscriptions to charity and the like come to about fifteen hundred dollars.

The expenses already recited total nearly seventy-five thousand dollars, or as much as my maximum income.  And this annual budget contains no allowance for insurance, books, losses at cards, transportation, sundries, the purchase of new furniture, horses, automobiles, or for any of that class of expenditure usually referred to as “principal” or “plant.”  I inevitably am obliged to purchase a new motor every two or three years—­usually for about six thousand dollars; and, as I have said, the furnishing of our city house is never completed.

It is a fact that for the last ten years I have found it an absolute impossibility to get along on seventy-five thousand dollars a year, even living without apparent extravagance.  I do not run a yacht or keep hunters or polo ponies.  My wife does not appear to be particularly lavish and continually complains of the insufficiency of her allowance.  Our table is not Lucullan, by any means; and we rarely have game out of season, hothouse fruit or many flowers.  Indeed, there is an elaborate fiction maintained by my wife, cook and butler that our establishment is run economically and strictly on a business basis.  Perhaps it is.  I hope so.  I do not know anything about it.  Anyhow, here is the smallest budget on which I can possibly maintain my household of five adults: 

   Annual budget—­minimum—­for family of five persons

Taxes on city house                              $ 3,200
Repairs, improvements and minor alterations        2,500
Rent of country house—­average                     7,000
Gardeners and stablemen, and so on                   800
Servants’ payroll                                  7,800
Food supplies                                     15,000
Light and heat—­gas, electricity, coal and wood    2,400
Saddle-horses—­board and so on                     2,000
Automobile expenses                                8,000
Wife’s allowance—­emphatically insufficient        5,000