Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/200

192 in her father’s house. Pride will not permit him to place her in a lower external position than the one she left when she became his wife. Nor is he always content with this. A little more elegance and style is often assumed, and a rate of expenditure adopted that is not unfrequently entirely out of all fair proportion to the income. It matters little whether this income be five thousand or five hundred per annum; in the outset, the temptation to draw too heavily, or even to go beyond it, is very great.

It most generally happens that the young wife never thinks of inquiring how far the means of her husband will warrant the rate of expenditure at which they are living. She naturally enough supposes that he will not go beyond his ability. Deceived by the freedom with which he spends his money, she is often led into extravagances of dress entirely at variance with their real condition in life, and remains utterly unconscious of the fact that she is an object of remark and censure to those who are much better acquainted with the real circumstances of her husband than she is. The consequences of errors of this kind are often very severely felt. Many a young couple’s fair prospects in life have been blighted by early extravagance, the result of weak pride on the part of the husband, and