If a millionnaire should lose a penny out of his pocket, would he sit down on a curb-stone and cry?  And shall a man possessed of everlasting fortunes wear himself out with grief because he has lost worldly treasure?  You have only lost that in which hundreds of wretched misers surpass you; and you have saved that which the Caesars, and the Pharaohs, and the Alexanders could never afford.

And yet society thinks differently; and you see the most intimate friendships broken up as the consequence of financial embarrassments.  You say to some one—­“How is your friend ——?” The man looks bewildered, and says, “I do not know.”  You reply, “Why; you used to be intimate.”  “Well,” says the man, “our friendship has been dropped:  the man has failed.”

Proclamation has gone forth:  “Velvets must go up, and homespun must come down;” and the question is “How does the coat fit?”—­not, “Who wears it?” The power that bears the tides of excited population up and down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all nations, Transatlantic and Cisatlantic, is—­clothes.  It decides the last offices of respect; and how long the dress shall be totally black; and when it may subside into spots of grief on silk, calico, or gingham.  Men die in good circumstances, but by reason of extravagant funeral expenses are well nigh insolvent before they get buried.  Many men would not die at all, if they had to wait until they could afford it.

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.”  “Never mind that; my friends have a better residence, and so will I.”  “A dress of that pattern I must have.  I cannot afford it by a great deal; but who cares for that?  My neighbor had one from that pattern, and I must have one.”  There are scores of men in the dungeons of the penitentiary, who risked honor, business,—­everything, in the effort to shine like others.  Though the heavens fall, they must be “in the fashion.”