We don't, of course, expect to get a
fifteen-hundred-dollar Cashmere, like Mrs. So-and-so, but we begin to
look at hundred-dollar shawls and nibble about the hook. We don't expect
sets of diamonds, but a diamond ring, a pair of solitaire diamond
ear-rings, begins to be speculated about among the young people as among
possibilities. We don't expect to carpet our house with Axminster and
hang our windows with damask, but at least we must have Brussels and
brocatelle,--it _would not do_ not to. And so we go on getting hundreds
of things that we don't need, that have no real value except that they
soothe our self-love,--and for these inferior articles we pay a higher
proportion of our income than our rich neighbor does for his better
ones. Nothing is uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls; and yet a young
man just entering business will spend an eighth of a year's income to
put one on his wife, and when he has put it there it only serves as a
constant source of disquiet,--for now that the door is opened, and
Cashmere shawls are possible, she is consumed with envy at the superior
ones constantly sported around her.
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