MARCH 235 



simple diet. The money people have must go some- 

 where; and if they like meat and drink better than most 

 things, but for the injury to the body it might as well 

 go in that way as in any of the other luxuries of life 

 which are not essentials. Much as I enjoy providing 

 food for others, I now feel that it is anything but a true 

 kindness to them. It is difficult to imagine the change 

 that would come over civilisation if that most improb- 

 able of all miracles were to take place and the majority 

 of people became non- meat -eaters. I have a note from 

 one of Walter Bagehot's books, which points out the 

 evil of reduction in luxury. I am not political econo- 

 mist enough to know whether his view is generally ac- 

 cepted now ; it is in contradiction to that of other 

 teachers. He says : ' We must observe, what is inces- 

 santly forgotten, that it is not a Spartan and ascetic 

 state of society which most generates saving. On the 

 contrary, if a whole society has few wants there is little 

 motive for saving. . . . Nothing is commoner than to 

 read homilies on luxury. Without the multifarious 

 accumulation of wants, which are called luxury, there 

 would in such a state of society be far less saving than 

 there is. And if it be good for the poor that capital 

 should be saved, then the momentary luxury which 

 causes that saving is good for the poor.' I spend in 

 fruit and on the garden what I should have spent under 

 ordinary circumstances in meat and wine, with certainly 

 more enjoyment to myself and, perhaps, less waste. 



My nieces, I believe, look upon me as a kind of witch 

 — meant no doubt as a subtle compliment — and, now 

 that many are married and have babies, they say they 

 want my opinion on the important question of how to 

 manage them. I am very fond of babies and a great 

 admirer even of large families, now so out of fashion. 

 In a book lately published, I read the other day of a 



