Wealthy woman

“ I am going to buy another block of ten thousand shares if it continues to decline, and then await developments. If it goes to zero I shall still have a little money left, and I shall have the income from the old farm—but I shall not have the hardihood to ask for the hand of Grace Harding.
You may talk as much as you please but money is a commanding factor in love and marriage. It is all very well for a wealthy man to fall in love and marry a poor girl, but it is an entirely different thing for a poor man to aspire to the hand and heart of a wealthy woman. ”

“ Rich women learned to do these tasks as children, but later contented themselves with superintending their performance by women slaves or freedwomen. But, especially in the rich families, the woman could contribute a great deal to the prosperity or the ruin of the house, according as she was or was not active in the performance of her work, zealous in her surveillance, energetic and shrewd in giving her orders, moderate in her expenditure. Even to-day the woman can contribute a great deal, in the wealthy classes, to the prosperity of the family. ”

“ If she had riches she could accomplish much that was now impossible; she could do good in many ways; she could relieve suffering and aid the impoverished and help the feeble far more adroitly and skilfully than could any woman who had always been wealthy, and who had not had her experience of life and of its misfortunes and its miseries. ”

“ Lady Wealthy is a rich widow, with perfect knowledge of the importance of wealth and beauty, a good heart, and a fine full vein of humour, a woman, in short, that teases, and at last reforms and marries, the lover she is true to. The humour of the following dialogue will allow the reader to imagine much of the bye-play conducive to its success. ”

“ I had rather you had owned to a more feminine desire; it would seem more natural.”
“Not really,” she contradicted. “Where will you find a woman who will marry a poor man if a richer offers? Every one wants wealth. It is the only thing which gives one power, and is never disappointing. ”

“ Woman has relied heretofore too entirely for her support on the needle—that one-eyed demon of destruction that slays its thousands annually; that evil genius of our sex, which, in spite of all our devotion, will never make us healthy, wealthy, or wise. ”

“ How furiously her needles flew! In just such manner must her forbears have sat, knitting and counting in the blood-sodden days of the Revolution.
“But, madame”—Quality’s voice was vibrant with horror—“how can you call it equal? It is inconceivable that a woman, with a woman’s heart beating within her breast, should sell a life merely for money!” ”

“ To her, that laugh in the dark had sounded as the laughter of the crowd that day when she was forced so close to the outcast women who were in the hands of the police.
"But those women," argued the frightened woman with herself, "sell themselves to all men for a price."
"And you," answered the heart of her womanhood, "and you, also, will sell yourself to one man, for a price. The wealth of womanhood committed to you—all the treasures that you have guarded so carefully—you will sell now to this good man for the price that he can pay. ”

“ Our business is with the woman of worthy aspirations and innate refinement, raised by a whirl of fortune’s wheel from decent poverty to actual wealth. She has a natural desire to mingle on equal terms with the better sort of rich people. She is glad of her wealth, but not purse-proud. ”

“ Never a very conscientious woman, and alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated by the power wielded by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the boy’s prospects with money, great money, such money as Andrew had accumulated, and now had at his disposal for his natural heirs. ”

“ If you were a rich man, I suppose I should be ashamed to speak as I do. But we are both poor, you for a nobleman and I for an artist. So there is no question of interest, is there? I have not seen your American heiress. She may be handsomer than I, for I am not the most beautiful woman in the world. She is rich. That is her advantage. She may be a good girl, but she is no better than I, the singer, the notary's daughter, who have nothing in my whole life to blush for. ”

“ CHAPTER III—AT THE FASHIONABLE HOTEL
Big incomes that do not exist—Visit to a gambling club—A deep-laid plot—Heavy blackmail—A masterly stroke—Two biters bitten
EVERY now and then the world is startled by the story of a woman who has succeeded in obtaining thousands of pounds from men of the world and men of business who have believed in her completely, and have fallen victims to the oldest form of the confidence dodge—a clever woman's own representation that she is entitled to a large fortune, or in possession of property which for the moment she is unable to realize. ”

“ But I found out that the schoolmistress had a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto been worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made her think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did,—modestly as I have expressed my wishes.
It is rather a pleasant thing to tell a poor young woman, whom one has contrived to win without showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the world values so highly, in following the lead of her affections. That was a luxury I was now ready for.
I began abruptly:—Do you know that you are a rich young person? ”

“ She told herself that she did not deserve her good fortune in being able to advance to a brilliant career not through hardship but over the most delightful road imaginable—amusing herself, wearing charming and satisfactory clothes, swimming and dancing, motoring and feasting. Without realizing it, she was strongly under the delusion that she was herself already rich—the inevitable delusion with a woman when she moves easily and freely and luxuriously about, never bothered for money, always in the company of rich people. The rich are fated to demoralize those around them. ”

“ She was, beneath her grande-dame exterior, a snobbish woman, who had married rather above her station and into one of the first families of America, but she had accepted the fortune which brought her luxury and social authority as the mere payment of a debt which society owed to one of her charm, intelligence, and dominant personality, rendering no thanks for what she felt to be due her. ”

“ But she sells herself before his eyes, for diamonds and laces, and trinkets and perfumes; for the liberty of walking on soft carpets and singing in gilded cages; and all the world laughs at his simplicity in supposing that, a fair chance given, any woman would ever do otherwise. Is not beauty woman's capital in trade, the price put into her hand to get whatever she needs; and are not the most beautiful, as a matter of course, destined prizes of the richest? ”

“ Home-made dresses, dollar corsets, riding in surface cars, seem mighty hard, when you see other women in their autos, their Russian sables, their Paris gowns—women who spend more money on their dogs every month than I have to spend on Bobbie. It’s a thousand times harder for a woman to be poor than it is for a man. ”

“ It had the insistance which power gives, and to a woman—or to most women—power is either money or beauty, since, in the world as it is, office and authority are denied them. Beauty was gone from the face of the ancient dame, but she still had much money, and, on rare occasions, it gave her a little arrogance. ”

“ Her value, the tremendous value of an unsmirched virtue, a woman's greatest asset in a world of desire and barter, became to her a possession she cherished above her jewels, above the money she could earn and save and the greater sums she dreamed of earning or winning by any means—all means but one. ”

“ From nature's raw products the working class can readily replace all of the material wealth owned by the employing class but the wealth of the working woman is the wealth of flesh and blood, of all her physical, mental and spiritual powers. It is not only the wealth of today but that of future generations which is being bartered away so cheaply. Have we no right to a voice in the disposal of our wealth, the greatest that the world possesses, the priceless wealth of its womanhood? ”

“ And, now he thought of it, it seemed to him highly probable, and not merely possible, that this high-spirited and clever woman, always active and on the alert for the means to make money for her family as well as for herself, should make a practice of disguising herself in the dress of a poor working-girl, in order the more readily to pass without attracting comment among the crowds of London, and perhaps even to collect facts which she could dress up into attractive press articles, or into book shape, with the object of earning a larger income. ”

“ As she grew up and advanced towards womanhood, she had moved in the most fashionable circles, and there acquired the habit of estimating people according to their wealth and social standing, rather than by qualities of mind. In her view, it appeared degrading in a woman to enter upon any kind of employment for money; and with the keeper of a boarding-house, particularly, she had always associated something low, vulgar, and ungenteel. ”

“ And there can be no dispute that the most valuable financial asset of the ordinary woman is the possibility that a man may be willing — and may, if only woman is disposed to fulfil her part of the bargain, be not only willing but anxious—to support her and to secure for her, if he can, a measure of that freedom which comes from the possession of money. ”

“ Now, the man or woman who marries for money——" [63]
"Earns it," broke in the widow fervently. "Earns it by the sweat of the brow. The man who marries a woman for her money is a white slave, a bond servant, a travesty on manhood. For every dollar he receives he gives a full equivalent in self-respect and independence, and all the things dearest to a real man."
"A real man," remarked the bachelor, taking out his pipe and lighting it, "wouldn't marry a woman for her money. It's woman to whom marriage presents the alluring financial prospect." ”

“ I knew my wealth was the first thing about me in most people's minds, but I was not a monster, and a girl might like me well enough without it. A woman is not often forced into marriage in this country. ”

“ You will find the woman with the most diamonds giving herself peacock-like airs over the woman who has fewest,—you will see the snob-millionaire treated with greater consideration by every one than the born gentleman who happens to have little of this world’s wealth. ”

“ Yet the vulgar rich may be as lavish as they please, may throw gold out of the windows, give a small fortune for their horses and carriages, they have not enough money to buy what that lady possesses, her delicacy and refinement. ”

“ She sewed in one of these fashionable dressmaking establishments—and the things she told me about what those women spend on their clothes—underclothes and furs and everything. Now there must be something wrong with a woman who can spend money on those things when she knows the agony of poverty right around her. ”

“ But the trouble with both men and money, when considered solely as rewards to enterprise, is that the quest of them is inexhaustible. One's income, however large, may reasonably become larger, and there is no limit to the number of husbands a prudent and fortunate woman may collect. ”

“ It is to be regretted that in this age too much attention is paid to dress by those who have neither the excuse of ample means nor of social culture. The wife of a poorly paid clerk or of a young man just starting in business aims at dressing as stylishly as does the wealthiest among her acquaintances. Consistency in regard to station and fortune is the first matter to be considered. A woman of good sense will not wish to expend in unnecessary extravagance money wrung from an anxious husband; or, if her husband be a man of fortune, she will not even then encroach upon her allowance. ”

“ I contend that woman, broadly considered, makes half the money that is made. Go the world over, take either Europe or America, the first source of money is intelligence and thrift; it is not speculation.... Out of the twenty millions of American people that make money, woman does more than half of the work that insures the reward. I claim for that half of the race whose qualities garner up wealth, the right to dispose of it, and to control it by law. ”

“ Being admired by a rich woman even isn't so good—though I've tried for that too, as you know, and equally failed of it; I mean in the sense of their being ready to do it for all they are worth. I've only had it from the poor, haven't I?—and we've long since had to recognise, haven't we? ”

“ That women have something to sell, or give away, and the question is just how much each one can get for it! That's what makes the most insignificant married woman feel superior to the happiest and richest old maid. ”

“ Her own personal life was as bare of luxury when she was a rich woman as it was when her capital was reckoned in hundreds only. But she did care deeply for character, and anxiously avoided all forms of easy generosity which might injure those she sought to help. ”

“ One field for the ability of the educated woman of our day is the making of a good home on a small income. She is the woman who will not, consciously or unconsciously, goad her husband to money-making. ”

“ When he comes back, this new woman looking into his eyes with the level glance, he will find is a woman who has earned money—in a new world that has been made over for her so that she can. You see all those lines of women in industry and commerce and the professions? ”

“ But she must appreciate how easy it would now be for her in this capital of the idle rich to find some other man glad to "protect" a woman so expert at gratifying man's vanity of being known as the proprietor of a beautiful and fashionable woman. ”