Priggishness

“ I am convinced!"
"Certainly, because I defy you—you and all like you, past, present, or future—to get out of this dilemma."
"Let us hear the dilemma."
"If gluttony is a monstrosity, then frugality pushed to the extreme ought to be a virtue."
"Certainly," answered the abbé.
"Then, my dear abbé, the more frugal a man is, according to your theory, the more deserving is he."
"Evidently, doctor."
"So the man who lives on uncooked roots, and drinks water only for the purpose of self-mortification, would be the type and model of a virtuous man." ”

“ I get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after your clothes and Rone's and Ted's and Tinka's and everybody's, and the laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry and—EVERYTHING! ”

“ When one considers the characteristics of our surface life for recent decades—the devotion to money-getting, the rapid increase of senseless and debauching luxury, the reckless frivolity, the unthinking haste and selfish pleasure-seeking—one questions. ”

“ In this a prig is more unhappy than any other: a cautious man may, in a crowd, preserve his own pockets by keeping his hands in them; but while the prig employs his hands in another's pocket, how shall he be able to defend his own? Indeed, in this light, what can be imagined more miserable than a prig? How dangerous are his acquisitions! how unsafe, how unquiet his possessions! Why then should any man wish to be a prig, or where is his greatness? ”

“ The horror of facing another lifetime of drudgery, of missing my hard-earned rest and losing my poor little savings, drove everything else out of my mind. You people nowadays can have no conception of the dread of poverty that hung over us then, or of the utter tiredness of forty years' unending overwork and striving to make a shilling do the work of a pound. ”

“ If poverty has its hardships, wealth has its annoyances. If wealth can satisfy caprices, when satisfied they do not give the same delight as the cheap enjoyments from time to time indulged in by the poor. ”

“ And perhaps the extreme simplicity of life, indicated by a few of the circumstances which happen to have been recorded, is to be attributed rather to the prevailing habits of frugality of the time, than to poverty. ”

“ Not contentment, but a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong! We hear it in the continual cry over what is known as the increased cost of living, and feel its pressure in the higher standard of living. ”

“ And yet I, the same man, shall be inclined to know how far an open and cheerful person differs from a debauchee, and how greatly the economist differs from the miser. For there is some distinction whether you throw away your money in a prodigal manner, or make an entertainment without grudging, nor toil to accumulate more; or rather, as formerly in Minerva's holidays, when a school-boy, enjoys by starts the short and pleasant vacation.
Let sordid poverty be far away. ”

“ Let us prevail upon you to refrain from the [Pg 107] use of spirituous liquors, which have occasioned misery to thousands—from gaming, a vice which will bring poverty upon your families, and from frolicking and amusements, which lead to idleness and expence; these habits of dissipation, can in no wise add to your comfort. Be industrious, diligent in your business, frugal in your expences, and endeavour to lay up part of your earnings against a time of need. ”

“ I have had to work for all my pennies, am of a practical turn of mind, and often live in constant dread of the first of every month—that fatal pay-day from which there is no escape. The success, therefore, of another fellow along different and more luxurious lines naturally irritates me. ”

“ If my friend gives him anything beyond a penny, the man will insist on shaking hands with him then and there, as a mark of his esteem: of that I feel sure.
There have been a good many funny things said and written about hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thought mean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby, and to be ashamed of your address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty—to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man ”

“ I once held myself too cheap to do much even for myself; for others, I would do nothing, except to feed the hunger that directly appealed to me, or relieve the wretchedness that made me equally wretched. ”

“ Some idea of its splendor has already been given—and, it is here that we shall find that height of luxury which is the opposite of that depth of poverty and physical wretchedness that we have just now been contemplating. ”

“ He desired to cut a figure in the world, and to make money that he might do so; and he was anxious withal to select that occupation with which he might personally be the least occupied—in which he might indulge his inactive propensities with the least corporeal exertion—and by which he might realize the greatest profit. After duly weighing matters, therefore, and balancing the various considerations that occurred, with all appropriate gravity, he determined to engage in merchandise—a branch of business for which of all men he possessed the least possible fitness. ”

“ With money in my pocket, and a consciousness, moreover, that I was doing nothing that was either imprudent, unworthy, or really mean, I own it mortified and vexed me to find myself obliged to put up with this impudent ill-usage from people who ought to reflect that they are but the servants of the public, and little likely to recommend themselves to the high by being insolent to the low. ”

“ Contemplate the indolent child of wealth, behold him a prey to the lassitude of unmeasured enjoyment, corroded by the satiety which always follows his exhausted pleasures. View the miser with an emaciated countenance, the consequence of his own penurious disposition, whose callous heart is inaccessible to the calls of misery, groaning over the accumulating load of useless treasure, which at the expense of himself, he has laboured to amass. ”

“ To journey the road of life with this is to 'carry weight' Take my advice,—I give it in all sincerity; you are as poor a man as myself; there are thousands of luxuries you can afford yourself, but this is too costly an indulgence for a small fortune. ”

“ There were no more happy meals at tea-time, no bread to toast, nothing but the barest, rude necessities of life. For they were poor, so poor that they scarcely knew how to look the future in the face. ”

“ But when a full and uncontrolled [323] command of money comes first, and every object of pleasure is placed within the reach of the unambitious, all other pursuits are too frequently despised; and every taste or accomplishment which could inform or strengthen the mind, and fill up the tedious intervals of life, is neglected. ”

“ Perhaps the chains of poverty hang heavily upon you, and you are friendless and alone, and you long with an intense longing that your load may be lightened; but the load continues, and you seem to be enveloped in an ever-increasing darkness. ”

“ I merely wish to say that if poverty stands forbiddingly between you and happiness, why, command me to the extent of half my fortune, I will give you a dowry that shall equal the expectations of any ambitious suitor in the land. ”

“ The rich, noisy, city, fat with food and drink, is a spent thing; its chief concern is its digestion and its little game of hide-and-seek with the undertaker. Money and office and success are the consolations of impotence. ”

“ Out upon the folly which, in estimating human misery, allows aught to bear comparison with the agony of the poor! I use the word poor relatively; I call not those poor to whom honesty brings self-respect, whose habits and whose means have gone together, and whose industry is its own support. But those are the poor whose exertion supplies not their wants—to whom cold, hunger, and weariness, are common feelings; who have known better days—to whom the past furnishes contrast, and the future fear. ”

“ We must cast aside the barbarous idea that the condition of a man who has an inexhaustible ruble in his pocket – a lucrative post, or some landed property that enables him to live in idleness – is a naturally happy condition. ”

“ Yet one could not but pity the unpleasing little wretches, who had risen so far above their environment as to save money in a place where money is bought dearly, and whose only reward for years of repression of every appetite had been a month of misery and frustration. ”

“ That I had believed myself rich a few moments back, and now found myself a beggar, could not give one-thousandth part of that suffering which I feel here. I have braved poverty in every form, and I could brave it again ”

“ They miss some of the snug conveniences and petty comforts which belong to an old, highly-finished, and over-populous state of society; where the ranks of useful labor are crowded, and many earn a painful and servile subsistence, by studying the very caprices of appetite and self-indulgence. ”

“ And if not a rich man, I shall be very comfortably off. Whatever luxuries you may need in the future will not have to be schemed for. My dear girl, will you order a chicken and some salad and a pint of some good dry champagne to be brought here? I'm particularly ravenous with hunger. Wonderful how one's appetite comes back when you get your mind free from worry. And to think of those concessions being of that value, after all. ”

“ For a farther proof that honest poverty is not such a deplorable thing as some people imagine, let me ask, what pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from the luxury of their tastes, and their affluent circumstances, always eat before they are hungry, and drink before they are thirsty? ”

“ A hundred temptations are provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense—tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. ”

“ It is a fact apparent to every thoughtful man that the larger portion of the misery that constitutes our Social Question arises from idleness, gluttony, drink, waste, indulgence, profligacy, betting, and dissipation. ”

“ My scholars were very poor themselves, and the pittance I earned from them I had oftentimes to refuse accepting. Each day showed my little resources growing smaller, and my hopes held out no better prospect for the future.
Was I to struggle on thus to the last, and sink under the pressure? was now the question that kept perpetually rising to my mind. My poverty had now descended to actual misery; my clothes were ragged; my shoes scarcely held together; more than once an entire day would pass without my breaking my fast. ”

“ But it is not the seamstress slowly starving in her garret, nor the mass of struggling poverty that is alone, or even chiefly, beset by the fiery temptations of gain, and the enticing pleasures which money can provide. ”

“ Moreover, he bore within him no lightness of spirit, but all the chill and fatigue of a hard day spent in business transactions that have come to nothing, added to the bitter knowledge of an immediate and pressing need for money in the common uses of life. ”

“ Scenes of pinching poverty occur within a few blocks of the most wanton luxury and extravagance. One lady spends fifty thousand dollars—enough to satisfy all the hungry—on one evening’s entertainment. ”

“ Poor strugglers, clinging on to the fringe of society, squeezing out the extra pounds so badly needed for necessities, for—what? The satisfaction of seeing a certain word written on an envelope, or of impressing a shop assistant with its sound. ”

“ By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such overplus as there may be do we account Happiness; any deficit again is Misery. ”

“ I had been in the habit of employing myself very diligently for trifling profits, and those who are in easy circumstances cannot form an adequate idea of the lively satisfaction I felt, when I could procure any work by which I could earn a few shillings. This kind of enjoyment, which Providence has given to the poor, appears intended to soften the many difficulties in their situation. ”

“ At the rate I am going on, debt, humiliation, and disgrace are before me. I may live up to my income without actually wronging others—but not beyond it. As things are now going, I am two hundred dollars worse off at the end of each year when than I began, and, worse still, weaker as to moral purpose, while the animal and sensual natures, from constant indulgence, have grown stronger. ”

“ Imagine her, with her fatherless, hungry children by her side, plying the needle late into the night, for the pitiful sum of seventy-five cents a week, as I once did. Imagine her, with this discouraging price of her eye-sight and strength, creeping forth with her little child by the hand, peeping cautiously through the glass windows of stores, to decide unobtrusively upon fabrics and labeled prices, or vainly trying to read human feeling enough in their owners’ faces to insure her from contemptuous insult at the smallness and cheapness of her contemplated purchase. ”

“ Wherefore count the price you have received for him whom you every day crucify, in your love of gain? Why, that when you are too poor to buy a drop of cold water, your beloved son may be rolled to hell in his chariot pillowed and cushioned about him. ”