Various

“ He should be as ready to utter his valiant ‘No,’ or ‘I can’t afford it,’ to the invitations of pleasure and self-enjoyment, as to mount a breach amidst belching fire and the iron hail of machine-guns. ”

“ And next day, all female Trinidad was talking, over five-o’-clock tea, about the remarkable fact, learnt indirectly through those unrecognised purveyors of fashionable intelligence, the servants, that that horrid proud Lady Modyford—‘who treats you and me, my dear, as if we were the dirt beneath her feet, don’t you know, and must call with two footmen and so much grandeur and formality’—had actually kissed that brown man’s wife, that’s to be the new District judge in Westmoreland, on both cheeks, the very first moment she saw her. ”

“ Those who are careless about personal expenditure are often driven in the end to do very shabby things. Burns tells us that, ‘for the glorious privilege of being independent,’ we should ‘gather gear by every wile that’s justified by honour.’
‘Do not accustom yourself,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.’ Only the other day the writer was speaking to an officer in the army who was so far from considering the debt which he owed to his tailor as either an inconvenience or a calamity, that he seemed to be quite proud of it. ”

“ CONSCIENTIOUS MONEY-SPENDING.
‘Never treat money affairs with levity—money is character.’ It is to be feared that many neglect this wise caution, and do not put conscience into the spending of their money, whatever they may do as regards the making of it. Rich people think that it is good for trade to be free-handed with wealth, and do not always distinguish between productive and unproductive expenditure. They are frequently guilty of demoralising the poorer classes by careless almsgiving and the bad example of their thoughtless money-spending. ”

“ A visitor from the North or the Midlands would probably be surprised, on entering the gloving metropolis, to find nothing of the noise or dirt which is usually associated with manufacturing industry. No tall chimneys belch out black clouds of smoke; no gaunt factories rear themselves aloft above the houses; no ponderous machinery makes its throb felt even by passers-by in the streets. ”

“ Nor is the money-spending of the poor less careless than that of the rich. During the time of high wages, labouring people buy salmon and green peas when they are barely in season; and Professor Leone Levi computes that their annual drink-bill amounts to thirty-six millions. That is exactly the sum which the working-classes spend in rent; so, although better houses are the strongest and most imperative demands for the working-classes, those classes are spending, on the lowest estimate, a sum equal to what they are spending on rent. ”

“ Altogether, the donkey, as he is found in Ireland, cannot fail to excite the admiration of the stranger. On the other side of the Channel he is abroad, and has the exile’s numbness of feeling. But in Ireland he is at home; he has the inspiriting sense of a numerous brotherhood, and one may easily see that he has a vivid consciousness of his social importance. ”

“ To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in old age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard for mere wealth’s sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled and the miserly. ”

“ The country surrounding Leap consists of a hopeless confusion of hills, none of which, however, have either the shape or the size to give them any dignity. These hills are in their turn covered with excrescences in the shape of huge knolls of all possible contours and sizes. As the natural vegetation is of a rankness quite unknown on the other side of the Channel, it will be imagined that the general aspect of the country is singularly harsh and wild. Yet this unpromising region is made to yield surprising crops of potatoes, and even of grain. ”

“ And as time went on, the toleration grew into friendliness and intimacy in many quarters, though never among the native planter aristocracy. Those noble people, intensely proud of their pure white blood, held themselves entirely aloof with profound dignity. ”

“ He is a most devout and regular attender of all religious ordinances; and no state of the weather will keep him from eight o’clock mass of a Sunday morning. When second mass is over, he gives himself up to secular enjoyment with a freedom unknown across the Channel. Sunday afternoon, indeed, is the period when his spirits are at their best, and according as his humour is for drinking, or sport, or argument, allows them their fullest scope. In the part of Ireland of which we are speaking, drunkenness is certainly rarer than in most parts of England and Scotland. ”

“ And Edward answered in a somewhat faltering voice: ‘Very well, my darling. One’s duty lies that way, I know; and if you’re strong enough to stand up and face it, why, I must try to face it also.’
And they did face it, with less difficulty even than they at first imagined. Presently, Mrs Castello came to call, the wife of the governor’s aide-de-camp: a pretty, pleasant, sisterly little woman, who struck up a mutual attachment with Marian almost at first sight, and often dropped in to see them afterwards. ”

“ Let it be your first care not to be in any man’s debt.’
People beginning to keep house should be careful not to pitch their scale of expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it, and they should remember that, as Lord Bacon said, ‘it is less dishonourable to abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty gettings.’
What an admirable manager of money was Mrs Carlyle! ‘There was,’ writes Mr Froude, ‘a discussion some years ago in the newspapers whether two people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could live together in London on three hundred pounds a year. ”

“ Sir Charles strongly urged in that famous document that ‘honesty is inseparable from the character of a thorough-bred gentleman;’ and that ‘to drink unpaid-for champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be a cheat, and not a gentleman.’
Men who lived beyond their means might be officers by virtue of their commissions, but they were not gentlemen. The habit of being constantly in debt, the general held, made men grow callous to the proper feelings of a gentleman. It was not enough that an officer should be able to fight ”

“ The fellow had speculated with my money and left my bills unpaid.’ Talking of debt, his remark was: ‘It makes a slave of a man. I have often known what it was to be in want of money, but I never got into debt.’ Washington was as particular as Wellington in matters of business detail, and he did not disdain to scrutinise the smallest outgoings of his household—determined as he was to live honestly within his means—even while holding the high office of President of the American Union. ”

“ Coaching is done by members of the ‘eight,’ who run with the boat along the towpath, shouting at the top of their voices to the different members of the crew, and sometimes, when the floods are out and the towpath is covered, splashing through water nearly up to their knees. Practice of this kind is continued daily, no matter what the weather is, until the races take place, which is usually about the middle of the term. ”

“ This point of view itself certainly lost nothing from Nora’s emphatic way of putting it; for, though Nora had herself a bountiful supply of fine old crusted West Indian prejudices, producible on occasion, and looked down upon ‘brown people’ of every shade with that peculiarly profound contempt possible only to a descendant of the old vanquished slave-owning oligarchy, yet her personal affection for Marian and Edward was quite strong enough to override all such abstract considerations of invisible colour ”

“ Like most despised races, however, donkeys have ineradicable opinions, and one of these appears to be their prescriptive right to their master’s domicile. As the Irishman, however, would seem to incline rather to the opinion of his donkey than to that of the sanitary officer, it will be seen that misunderstandings are apt to arise. The donkey is a still further source of mischief in that he utterly refuses to make any distinction between his owner’s ground and other people’s. ”

“ Some of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately related to the right use of money, such as generosity, honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice, as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. ”

“ Passing over to the next, that is the Lent term, we come to the first eight-oared college races, which at Oxford are better known as the Torpids. In these races, the colleges compete against one another for the honour of first place or ‘head of the river.’ No man who has rowed in his college ‘eight’ in the previous year is eligible to row in his Torpid; the majority of the crew consist of men who have received coaching in the October term, and have taken part in the four-oared races described above. ”

“ It is no part of wisdom to depreciate the little elegances and social enjoyment of our homes. These things refine manners and enlarge the heart. A gentleman told Dr Johnson that he had bought a suit of lace for his wife. The Doctor said: ‘Well, sir, you have done a good thing and a wise thing.’ ‘I have done a good thing,’ said the gentleman; ‘but I do not know that I have done a wise thing.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ continued the Doctor; ‘no money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people ”

“ Few of the people in the district have been beyond their native parish, and the priest is for the majority of them the reservoir of all secular as well as spiritual knowledge. He conveys instruction to them on all subjects, and on Sundays often closes his ministrations with hints of practical bearing on their temporal concerns. During one of the weeks of our stay in the neighbourhood, a mad dog got at large, and wrought considerable mischief on man and beast. ”

“ The Torpids row in what are called clinker-built or gig-boats, which have a small keel, and of which the seats are fixed; whereas the ‘eights’ are rowed in smooth, keelless boats—the bottom somewhat resembling that of a small canoe—and fitted with sliding seats, by which the stroke can be lengthened and more use made of the legs. The extremities of the boat are covered with canvas, to prevent the water washing in over the side. The crew of a college eight is composed of the best men the college can muster, all of course being members of the college. ”

“ The special gloves that we have been following through all their stages are those which are known in the trade as ‘grain’ goods, and are sold to the public under the name of dogskin, Cape, and other names, each name indicating some peculiarity in the quality and finish of the leather. Many other kinds of gloves are made in the district, such as calf and buck and doe skin; the calf gloves are made from English calf-skins, and the buck and doe from English lambskins. There is also a large manufacture of fabric gloves—in other words, of gloves made of cotton, woollen, silk, or merino material. ”

“ The diet of the Irishman in this part of the country is, of course, potatoes and milk. As he himself puts it, he has potatoes twenty-one times a week. In the event of a blight, such as the historic one, the result in certain parts of Ireland could scarcely be less disastrous than at any former period. If one may judge by the physique of its consumers, the diet requires no recommendation of the medical faculty, for a more stalwart race it would be difficult to find. In this corner of the country so long ‘preserved,’ we should expect to find the natural Irishman, and we certainly found him. ”

“ The married women of the west of Ireland wear a long, coarse, black cloak, descending to their feet, and furnished with a commodious{238} hood which partially envelops their features. A more ungraceful garment than this cloak it would be difficult to imagine; and in bright summer weather it strikes one as the most perversely unreasonable of all human adornings. The unmarried women, though disallowed the use of the cloak, yet contrive to disfigure themselves with equal success by means of a shawl, in which they invariably envelop their heads as well as their shoulders. ”

“ It is easy to talk against our extravagance; tell us rather how to spend our money advantageously—that is to say, for the greatest good of the greatest number.’ The fact is, riches must now be considered by all good men as a distinct profession, with responsibilities no less onerous than those of other professions. ”

“ Entering one of these cottages, you may see a woman rocking a cradle with one foot, and giving an occasional glance at the dinner cooking on the fire, while she bends over a frame on which the gloves are stretched, and with a crochet-hook, and apparently little more attention than a knitter gives to her stocking, she quickly adds those three times three rows of silk-work up what will be the back of the gloves. ”

“ The reader, especially the fair reader, has doubtless often seen, if not used, the shapes with which pastry is cut into leaves, circles, squares, and so on. Now, if you will put your two hands together, palms uppermost, and imagine a shape that would cut out the figure made by these two hands, minus the thumbs, and treating the two little fingers as one, you will have a very fair idea of a glover’s punch or ‘web.’ In the room we now enter we find quite a number of these punches, agreeing with the number of sizes manufactured. ”

“ This must become every year more apparent, because the classes that have hitherto had the monopoly of education have now to compete with the working-classes trained to privation for generations.
But although the creeping-in of luxury should be guarded against at the commencement of married life, people should learn how to grow rich gracefully. ”

“ It seems quite common to put one’s watch-key to one’s ear to ascertain if it is going; and many people are in the habit of winding their watches, and three minutes after, pausing to wonder whether they have done so or not. ”

“ Those who have displayed the greatest ‘staying-powers’ and the most perfect style, or are likely to develop into the best ‘oars,’ are picked out, and, along with any members of the last year’s crew that may be available, form the material out of which the ‘’Varsity eight’ is composed.
The process of selecting the actual crew out of these men that have been chosen from the ‘Trial Eights,’ and arranging them in the places they are best fitted to occupy, takes up the first few weeks of the next or Lent term. ”

“ Immediately behind the cart came a crowd of women similarly attired, and all keening, though in rather a mechanical and half-hearted fashion. Then followed a straggling concourse of men, all on foot, in their workaday garb, and with faces unwashed. ”

“ What an anxious minute that is, so much depends upon getting off well, especially with a crew in which many of the men are rowing in one of these bumping races for the first time. A bad start causes flurry and unsteadiness in the boat, and then there is sometimes a risk of being bumped before the men settle down together to a long and even stroke. ”