My electric-light bills are over one hundred dollars a month.  My coal and wood cost me even more, for I have two furnaces to heat the house, an engine to pump the water, and a second range in the laundry.  One man is kept busy all the time attending to these matters and cleaning the windows.  I pay my butler eighty dollars a month; my second man fifty-five; my valet sixty; my cook seventy; the two kitchen maids twenty-five each; the head laundress forty-five; the two second laundresses thirty-five each; the parlor maid thirty; the two housemaids twenty-five each; my wife’s maid thirty-five; my daughter’s maid thirty; the useful man fifty; the pantry maid twenty-five.  My house payroll is, therefore, six hundred and fifty dollars a month, or seventy-eight hundred a year.

We could not possibly get along without every one of these servants.  To discharge one of them would mean that the work would have to be done in some other way at a vastly greater expense.  Add this to the yearly sum represented by the house itself, together with the cost of heating and lighting, and you have twenty-eight thousand four hundred dollars.

Unforeseen extras make this, in fact, nearer thirty thousand dollars.  There is usually some alteration under way, a partition to be taken out, a hall to be paneled, a parquet floor to be relaid, a new sort of heating apparatus to be installed, and always plumbing.  Generally, also, at least one room has to be done over and refurnished every year, and this is an expensive matter.  The guest room, recently refurnished in this way at my daughter’s request, cost thirty-seven hundred dollars.  Since we average not more than two guests for a single night annually, their visits from one point of view will cost me this year eighteen hundred and fifty dollars apiece.

Then, too, styles change.  There is always new furniture, new carpets, new hangings—­pictures to be bought.  Last season my wife changed the drawing room from Empire to Louis Seize at a very considerable outlay.

Our food, largely on account of the number of our servants, costs us from a thousand to twelve hundred dollars a month.  In the spring and autumn it is a trifle less—­in winter it is frequently more; but it averages, with wine, cigars, ice, spring water and sundries, over fifteen thousand dollars a year.

We rent a house at the seashore or in the country in summer at from five to eight thousand dollars, and usually find it necessary to employ a couple of men about the place.

Our three saddle-horses cost us about two thousand dollars for stabling, shoeing and incidentals; but they save me at least that in doctors’ bills.

Since my wife and daughters are fond of society, and have different friends and different nightly engagements, we are forced to keep two motors and two chauffeurs, one of them exclusively for night-work.  I pay these men one hundred and twenty-five dollars each a month, and the garage bill is usually two hundred and fifty more, not counting tires.  At least one car has to be overhauled every year at an average expense of from two hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars.  Both cars have to be painted annually.  My motor service winter and summer costs on a conservative estimate at least eight thousand dollars.