Morning journal and courier., 1884-09-08
GOSSIP ABOUT LUXURY.
Great Men and Their InduIgences- GastrOnomy and Wit.

\ From the London Standardl
 ! We can picture the look Of amazed con tempt rolling in Dr. Johnson's bleared eyes, could he hear MT. Ruskin propound his pc ' litico-economic theories. Bounds, sir, but you lie!'' would doubtless be his sole reply to ! the ingenious statistician, who makes out ! that all 1niseries are attributable to the fact E that four -elevenths of our bodily labor are | misdirected. ''You cannot spend money in ! luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, I you do more good by spending it in luxury You make them exert industry, whereas by ! giving it you keep them idle" This is the ! doctors view.
 Luxury has been a powerful civilizer MT. 1 Rukins may call it a fungus growth on an E imperfect plant. As we descend the scale of | life the circle of wants narrows. The fssi- | parous polyp has few wants and few powers This biological law-the proportion of power E to want-holds good of man; not individu- ! ally, perhaps, but a species. Between the \ cave-man and the cultured citizen is a long and complex chain of development, every link of which contains an alloy of luxury. I The more numerous our artificial wants the t greater the ingenuity and labor to supply them; the greater, too, our pleasure, since, I as Goldsmith says, pleasure consists in obvi- E ating necessities as they rise. Of course I there are peoples as we'll as men upon whom multiplicity of agreeable consciousness would have an enervating, if not debasing R effect. The degree of luxury required to make beast of a Hottentot would merely tickle the palate and stimulate the ambition of an Englishman or a Frenchman. Lady Manners notwithstanding, we are not great belly-gods. Here and there may finger an Apicus, but he is not likely to poison him self, seeing that the verdict of a coroner's jury would be, Suicide while temporarily insane, ; and not, as with the ancient epicure, ''Died of grief at having only ten million sesterces to live upon" Heliogabalus and Lucius Aurelius Verus may have their nine teenth century representatives, who wreck fortune in feast. There may even be per sons who crave dishes of peacocks' brain, and who, if they could, would discover in the example of Cleopatra of Clodius an ex- cuse for putting before their guests pearls dissolved in vinegar and in wine. But it is
 not of luxury this scale that purists com
 monly complain. The war is directed main
 ly against indulgences which, though great
 in the aggregate, are personally small. Thus
 it happens that in their desire to save some
 thing from the general wreck, you find your
 self unexpectedly and roughly pulled up on
 pet vice. Unfortunately you may not al
 ways have at hand so crushing an answer as
 that lately given by an American. ''How
 much do you spend day in cigarsF asked
 mote remover. Half dollar" was the re- ply. ''And you have smoked, how many
 years?'' ''Oh, twenty or thereabout." ''Ah, my friend, had you never smoked what a fine house you might have had in Fifth avenue here.' ''You never smoked?" rejoined the other quietly. 'FNo, never" cited the brain less one. ''Then please point out your house,
 Many attempts have been made to gauge
 opinion upon luxuries, such, for instance, as
 tobacco and wine. Every one of these eff
 forts has strengthened the axiom that prac-
 tice is often prejudice writ small. Mir. Glad
 stone ''detests" smoking, though he finds
 wine necessary at the time of greatest intel
 tectual exertion. Dr. Freeman tried to
 smoke once when young, and, having strong
 memory, has not repeated the experiment.
 NJ Jules Simon's love of female society keeps
 him from the male-loving pipe, while MT.
 Ruskin abhors smoking because he objects to
 have the world made into a huge spittoon.
 But, however interesting in itself, the per
 sonal opinion of eminent men on a matter of this kind is valueless as an expression of the general feeling. Their aims and conditions of life differ from those of the masses. Hence their luxuries-and they have luXuries-are dissimilar, just as the late Alfred Mouchet's tastes were unlike those of the apostle of aes- theticism. Alfred Mouchet, by the way, was celebrated in Paris Phomme au seau, or the bucket man. The achievement that won him fame victory in 1876 over man named Dietrich, who surrendered only after having eaten eight pounds of mutton, eight pounds of chicken and an enormous quantity of bread. Of greater practical in
 terest than this parti-gauge were calculations
 made in 1876 as to the average amount spent in luxuries by the various classes of society.
 Eighteen pounds year was put down for luxuries in each laboTing mans family. Half was conceded for comfort leaving nine pounds multiplied by five million families,
 or forty-five million pounds ''wasted" by la
 borers. Six million middle-class families were credited with the disposal of thirty
 million pounds in the same way. Against two million upper-class society stood the sum
 of three hundred and seventy million pounds. Statistics, where there are no authorized re
 turns, must always be, more or less, mere
 guess work. How these figures were ob-
 tained it is impossible to say. Like the Ger
 man camel, they may have been evolved out
 of the inner consciousness. If this is the case, it must have been a consciousness open to one form only of laboring and middle class luxury, for it is clear on the face of \ these figures that drink and tobacco are con sidered almost the sole luxuries. That the stomach is still standard of luxury must be admitted, but that it is the only standard is no longer true. Englishmen, class, have no pleasure in brutal feeding, such as de- lighted their piratical forefathers. The re- finement of taste in food, like refinement of laughter, has brought with it rarer and more costly forms of luxury. The jokes and the nOrSeplay that made ring the Welk1n over Saxon Hengest and Horsa might stir the mud of a coalheaver's laughter. To move Sher- idan you must have the wit of 8 Lamb or 8 Byron. The analogy between wit, or mental and material luxury, is close. Men who shriek ''Ohl oh!" on seeing anothers hat crushed over his eyes, are not likely to say
 "Ah! ah!' when Dumas fills remarks, My father is so vain that he is quite capable of getting up behind his own carriage to make people believe he keeps a negro!" The first is an example of savage fun, once common
 as blackberries It represents the gross lux
 ury of the stomach. The second is 8 speci-
 men of polished wit, precious as the noun
 tain edelweiss, and denotes the cultured lux
 ury which has now many adherents and so many guides. In gross luxury our chief dan ger lies Let those who encourage, no less
 than those who indulge, weigh yell the negro admonition to FFbruder in debt" for oysters.
 ''Bredren, all the trouble ob this land ob ours rises from de fact that one man wid ten dol lars to be respect'ble must lib like one wid twelve"
 CRAZY QUILT INGENUITY.