Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/38

30 and embellishes life, and incites the man to better care of his house and his person. It is, rather, a motive of good economical and domestic habits. And it promotes a kind of saving. A man who will not lay up for old age will save money to buy a gold watch or a chain, or nice furniture. Fondness for variety is one of the characteristic traits of the luxury of intelligent and prosperous peoples. Variety in food, clothing, furnishings, and in amusements is an excellent stimulant to industry, a preventive of enervation of man's mind. It is likewise one of the most vital needs of human nature, one of the legitimate charms of life. The luxury of industrious and prosperous peoples is predominantly exhibited in the dwelling and the furniture. It creates permanent establishments that make life more pleasant. It transforms the house from a simple shelter into a commodious and pleasant mansion, beautified and vivified with numerous and interesting objects. Herein lies the inappreciable benefit of national modern luxury. This it is that has divided up the house according to the various wants and conveniencies for which it is intended to provide. The result is a more becoming, more private, and more independent daily life for each of the members of the family, as well as a more hygienic régime. The example spreads from the upper to all the social classes. The house becomes the center of man's efforts to embellish. Many bad habits and many vices are abandoned. It is a general opinion that whenever the workman shall have a sufficiently ample abode, diversified and adorned, the family life will retain more attractions and the saloon will lose them.

While modern taste expends liberally on the construction, furnishing, and decoration of the house, it encourages sobriety in the wardrobe. It is one of its characteristics that it makes itself compatible with civil equality and with fraternity in social relations, colliding with them in nothing. The dress of the men bears witness to this. Men are no longer to be seen, as Henry IV of France used to say, "wearing their mills and their forest estates on their backs." Lace, in sleeves and frills, formerly habitual with middle-class people, has long been left off by the men, and there is no prospect of its returning. Who, when he looks at an assembly of two or three hundred men, including representatives of all classes, from the highest to the most modest, can tell from their dress which are the wealthy ones? It is true that women still indulge in these little extravagances; but this does not prove that the majority of the rich expend more now upon dress than those similarly situated have done during the past three or four hundred years. We complain that maids wish to be dressed like their mistresses, farm-servants like the farmers' wives, and these like the landlords' wives. A few may