4i8 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 1908 



Monthly Comment 



HE Costly Life is, of all forms of existence, 

 the one most on public view in America. 

 Its practitioners and apostles abound on 

 every side. They are as conspicuous in the 

 cities as they are abundant in the country. 

 Their doings fill pages of the daily press, 

 and their portraits, and those of their fami- 

 lies, are the most charming embellishments of the illustrated 

 supplements. Evidences of this splendid existence abounds 

 everywhere. Our most sumptuous amusements are devised 

 for the delectation of its devotees. Our most expensive 

 hotels are conducted solely for their benefit. Our finest 

 private residences are erected for their personal use; and 

 so far-reaching is their influence that it often seems as though 

 prices in general were raised everywhere that the owners of 

 wealth might have more numerous opportunities through 

 which to disburse it. 



That the Costly Life is the most expensive life goes with- 

 out saying. It is a form of existence that depends entirely 

 on the expenditure of money. It does not matter whether 

 this expenditure be good or wise, beneficial or desirable; all 

 that one need do is to spend abundantly, lavishly, ostenta- 

 tiously and copiously, and one is immediately admitted within 

 the high-priced portals behind which the Costly Life is culti- 

 vated and developed. The Costly Life is not only vastly 

 expensive, but overwhelmingly ostentatious. Its corner-stone 

 is publicity and its crowning pinnacle is notoriety. Every- 

 thing done under its aspiring influence must be done either 

 in public or in such a way that the public immediately is 

 favored with full details. Even when it descends to murder 

 it selects a most public place as the scene of the slaughter, 

 and for years thereafter the public is kept advised through 

 the newspapers of the subsequent life of the murderer and 

 his daily doings. 



Being expensive, the Costly Life is chiefly concerned with 

 the disbursement of money. There is no limit and no stop- 

 ping. The money is poured out in a continuous golden 

 stream. It can not stop for a single day nor even so much 

 as a single hour. And it is used for but two purposes: the 

 personal enjoyment of the spender and his exploitation. The 

 personal enjoyment may come first, but the public aspects of 

 the Costly Life are quite as essential to its successful cultiva- 

 tion as fine houses or boxes at the opera. And those outside 

 the costly pale look on agape at these modern splendors, 

 read about them, talk about them, and, when occasion per- 

 mits, pay the highest possible prices for the privilege of 

 sitting in the same room with these marvelous dispensers of 

 money and for gazing at them at close hand. Their names 

 are familiar to everyone, and thousands of persons who 

 would not know any of them, should they be fortunate 

 enough to meet them on the street, have their full histories 

 at their finger tips and talk as familiarly of their millions as 

 though they had personal knowledge of what they are speak- 

 ing. This, no doubt, is highly gratifying to the Costly 

 Livers and is a valuable asset in the promotion of their 

 magnificence. 



Yet the Costly Life is not new; it is something that has 

 existed since one man managed to accumulate a little more 

 money than another; it has thriven in other ages and in other 

 lands than ours; and, until within a very few years, most 

 of the written history of the world has been concerned with 

 its apostles; that is to say, with the kings and princes, rather 



than with the masses of people, conveniently termed the 

 Common Public. But the Costly Life as practised in America 

 is something quite new. It has developed by leaps and 

 bounds. It has swept over the country with the velocity of 

 a cyclone. Scarce a generation has sufficed to fasten its grip 

 on our national life in a new and unheard-of way. It has 

 not only become conspicuous, but it is all-absorbing, and its 

 devotees are not only to be found among those who can 

 afford its ostentatious luxury, but its ways and doings are too 

 frequently aped by those who cannot meet its demands on 

 the personal exchequer and who, after a brief sojourn within 

 what are imagined to be the portals of the elect, are cast 

 out suddenly into that frightful pit in which the Unsuccessful 

 and the Failures are everlastingly engulfed. 



The Costly Life is everything the Simple Life is not, yet 

 it is very much easier to live. The apostles of the Simple 

 Life have somehow created the impression that it is necessary 

 to hunt up ways of living simply in order to be completely 

 consistent and completely happy. It is never necessary to 

 hunt up anything to live the Costly Life but money, and, of 

 course, if you do not have enough of that there is no sense 

 at all in trying to live the pace. There is nothing easier in 

 the world than to spend money, and as you do not have to 

 spend it wisely in the Costly Life, it is of all forms of exist- 

 ence the easiest. It is so easy it is slippery, and if your bank 

 account runs out you are likely to find yourself at the bottom 

 of the heap before you realize how you got there. But in 

 the Simple Life you are all the time trying to be simple; you 

 do things yourself that, in a more complicated existence, you 

 would employ others to do for you. Moreover, you are 

 trying to live simply all the time, whereas in the Costly 

 Life you don't have to try at all, but plunge gaily on, throw- 

 ing money to the right and left, and bawling at the top of 

 your voice that attention may be more directly drawn to you. 

 For some people this is not only intensely enjoyable, but it 

 is the single contribution they are able to make to the progress 

 of civilization. 



The audience is quite as essential to the successful per- 

 formance of a play as the play itself or the actors. No way 

 has yet been devised whereby everyone may live the Costly 

 Life. Only a few can reach the golden goal of ultimate 

 success in this direction, and while a goodly number may 

 strive for the same end, the larger part of the population 

 can only look on. This, of course, lends a fine zest to the 

 game. Some people think it gives distinction to be observed 

 in their efforts to climb the social tree, while others again 

 have no greater pleasure than to watch their fellowmen 

 undertake impossible tasks, and make essays to achievement 

 they would never dream of doing. But those outside help 

 those inside, even if but in a quiet, passive way; for they are 

 the foil and background, the neutral tint on which the 

 splendors of their disbursements appear with the brilliance 

 of the noonday sun. 



Modern life is essentially ingenious, and we can all have 

 not only our glimpses of the Costly Life, but our personal 

 experience of it. The modern hotel, with its wealth of os- 

 tentatious luxury, meets this condition and amply fulfils it. 

 There we can spend as much for our rooms, our foods and 

 our drinks as the real exponents of the Costly Life. We can 

 eat in the rooms they eat in, and perhaps brush against them 

 in the halls. It is very splendid and very costly. Whether 

 it is worth the price each must decide for himself. 



