. Social Dynamite: The Wickedness of Modern Society from the Discources of T. De Witt Talmage . -ple have. If they have a sumptuous table, and fine resi-dence, and gay turn-out, and exquisite apparel, and brilliantsurroundings, we must have them, irrespective of our capa-city to stand the expense. We throw ourselves down in de-spair because other people have a seal-skin coat, and wehave an ordinary one; because others have diamonds, andwe have garnets; because others have Axminster, and wehave Brussels; because others have lambrequins, and wehave plain curtains. What others have we mean to hav
. Social Dynamite: The Wickedness of Modern Society from the Discources of T. De Witt Talmage . -ple have. If they have a sumptuous table, and fine resi-dence, and gay turn-out, and exquisite apparel, and brilliantsurroundings, we must have them, irrespective of our capa-city to stand the expense. We throw ourselves down in de-spair because other people have a seal-skin coat, and wehave an ordinary one; because others have diamonds, andwe have garnets; because others have Axminster, and wehave Brussels; because others have lambrequins, and wehave plain curtains. What others have we mean to haveanyhow. So there are families hardly able to pay theirrent, and in debt to every merchant in the neighborhood, 264 EXTRAVAGANCE OF MODERN SOCIETY. who sport apparel inapt for their circumstances, and run sonear the shore that the first misfortune in business or thefirst hesiegement of sickness tosses them into are thousands of families moving from neighborhoodto neighborhood, staying long enough in each one to exhaustall their capacity to get trusted. They move away because. A SUMPTUOUS TABLE.*—Page 263. the druggists will give them no more medicine, and thebutchers will afford them no more meat, and the bakers willgive them no more bread, and the grocers will furnish themno more sugar until they pay up. Then they suddenly findout that the neighborhood is unhealthy, and they hire a cart-man, whom they never pay, to take them to a part of thecity where all the druggists and butchers and bakers andgrocers will be glad to see them come in, and send to themthe best rounds of beef, and the best coffee, and the best ofeverything, until the slight suspicion comes into their brainthat all the pay they will ever get from their customer is thehonor of his society. There are about five thousand such EXTRAVAGANCE OF MODERN SOCIETY. 265 thieves in Brooklyn. You see I call it by a plain name, be-cause when a man buys a thing that he does not expect topay for he is a thief.
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