Least of all should we envy those who lead
a fashionable life. The votaries of fashion
are, for the most part, slaves of a custom to
which they are born, and from whose bonds they
cannot easily emancipate themselves. Look at
the so-called swell. What a life is his! It
begins, not with the dawn of morning, not
with the first rays of the sun, but with the
first glimmer of the gas-lights. Getting up late
in the day, he devotes himself to the task of
killing time by all sorts of methods—by smoking,
skimming newspapers, receiving idle visitors,
lounging, shopping, riding, playing billiards,
betting, dining, yawning in the stalls of the
theatre, sapping, and gambling, and drinking to
a late hour at the clubs. He hurries from one
empty pleasure to another—never is, but always
to be blest—awakes every morning with a racking
headache, and goes on yawning, and for
ever killing the precious time that he can never
recal.

Then the lady of fashion. How is her time
spent; how does she enjoy life? In dressing
and re-dressing, in powdering and painting, in
paying cold visits of ceremony, in riding in the
Row, dressing again, and dining dismally, in
sitting out weary operas, which she does not listen
to, and does not care about. The same round,
day after day, like a mill-horse. Such, a life has
no real enjoyment. To some it is a stern duty;
to others an intolerable slavery.

Did you ever, my humble friend, happen to
be walking down Long-acre of an evening when
the broughams and the chariots come streaming
along with their gaily-dressed loads bound for
the opera. Doubtless. Well; did you never
notice the young ladies, those who have been
"out" two or three seasons, as the fashionable
slang has it did you never notice how sad and
weary some of them are; how blank and
indifferent their looks; how jaded and bored they
seem! They are prisoners, captive slaves in
the hands of an inexorable Fashion, which drives
with a lash as hard to bear as the whip of a
Southern planter. I once said to one of those
young ladies:

"I suppose you are very gay, and enjoy
yourself very much?"

She smiled sadly, and said: "What you call
gaiety is to me a weary task, the burden of my
life. I never enjoy myself except when I go
into the country at Christmas."

I think that, even if I were without shoes
and stockings, I could not envy those fine people
rolling in their carriages to the opera. They
know every note of the music by heart, as well
as they know the church service—better,
perhaps; they don't want to go; they are sick and
weary of it. They sit and yawn the whole
evening, and are glad when it is time to go
home to bed and forgetfulness. But you and I
who pay our shillings half-price to the pit—
how we enjoy the play! What a delight it is
to think about for days to come! How we
long to go again!

There are many real advantages in being poor,
if we only knew it. I am sure that the people
who can just make both ends meet, and are
under no obligation to keep up appearances,
are in the best position for attaining happiness.
It may be said that poverty enjoys the largest
amount of liberty. If a man can earn enough
for the support of himself and his family, he is
infinitely more free than many who, being in a
better position, have other things and other
persons to study. He has his stern inexorable
duties, as most men have, but in his hours of
leisure he is free to do as he pleases. He is
bound by no law of fashion, restrained by no
rules of etiquette; he is answerable only to
himself and his conscience.

It is no doubt necessary that some of us
should have a lofty ambition, and that there
should be persons willing to sacrifice themselves
in high positions for their own honour, and, I
will add, their country's good. But such are
not to be envied; they are rather to be pitied,
when we think how they must repress their
natures, and deny themselves, and live often
through the whole of their lives with the canker
of care for ever eating at their hearts. Why
should I wish to exchange places with some
rich lord or great dignitary? If I were a lord or
a dignitary, I should not be free, this evening,
when I have finished work, to go into the back
yard and knock up that rabbit-hutch for Johnny.
Besides, I like to smoke my pipe when I am
doing amateur carpentering. It would never do
for a dignitary to be seen in his back premises
in his shirt-sleeves smoking a cutty.
Contemplating that delightful hour with the saw and
hammer and the timber purchased from the
egg merchant, the thought flashes across me
that if I were the Lord Chancellor, or the
Archbishop of Canterbury, I should bring scandal
on the highest seats of the realm by making
away with myself. I am very fond of strolling
about the streets and looking in at the shop
windows; I don't mind owning, too, that I am
partial to skittles and bowls; but if I were a
dignitary I should have to deny myself these
and many other simple pleasures, which fashion
entirely denies to the great folks. What
pleasure is equal to a stroll through green fields
on a fine summer's day, with the daisies twinkling
under your feet, and the birds singing among
the leaves above? He must be a vain and
thoughtless man, who, at such a time, envies
the pleasure of the canterer in Rotten Row.
Care, as the classic says, sits behind the horseman
ay, and vanity sits in the saddle with
him. More than half those horsemen and horsewomen
are doing a task up and down, up and
down, to show themselves. They have no time
to have such refreshing thoughts as I have
among the daisies and the skylarks. And I
warrant you they will not have half the appetite
for their kickshaws as I shall have for that
vulgar cold beef when I call in at the Spotted
Dog, on my trudge homewards.

I come now to the most exquisite of all
simple pleasures, a pleasure of which, I suspect,
few but simple folks ever taste—that of rising
early in the morning. How many hundreds of