Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1890-09-03
ABOUT ExTRAVAGANCE.
I'm the Past Money Was Spent More Reck-
lessIy Than at Present.

1essIy Than at Present.
Pessimism continually charges wo-
full extravaganza upon our age. The
fathers, it says, were compelled to
scrape and to save, mindful of every
dollar, and content if only a meager
balance remained to their credit at the
end of the year. We are rapidly drifting
into enervating luxury, it affirms, and
our costly buildings, and paintings.
sculpture, our comfortable modes Of
life, and our reckless way of consider
Ing public and private expenditures are
indicative of an unhappy mental and
even moral degeneration. There is
much apparently in support of such
statement. We are weary of prosaic
living, in great degree, and long for
release to a civilization eminently COM
Portable if not luxurious, and, at least,
Interesting" as Matthew Arnold would
say. Not so far beneath our greed
for monetary prosperity, indeed,
existing as potent motive to accumu-
lation, is the natural desire for a better
social condition. We take half-holiday
now and then to study great pictures or
statues: we read more than ever good
books and magazines, and we live in
better houses. All this is necessary to
proper development, and yet we must
confess certain tendency to extrava-
gance, careless and dangerous. Still,
however reckless we may be- it is per-
haps consolation to know that we are
less extravaganza than the people of GER
tain other times. We pay our thou
sands for our houses, our pictures and
our sculpture, and yet do not equal the
Greeks and the Romans in expenditure.
Attalus offered Nicias a sum equal to
SIS, 900 for painting. and the artist re-
fused him, preferring to present the
picture to his country as gift. julius
Caesar bought of Timomachus, the Athe-
MAN painter, two figures for eighty tai
snts, or S10O, 900, and Apelles re-
ceived some $25, 900 for a portrait
of Alexander welding a thunder
bolt. Indeed, he himsef paid $751;
600 for the pictures with which
Protogenes had adorned his studio, and
which had proved unstable, and this
chiefly as an encouragement to strug-
Cling fellow-artist. Some of our public
lecturers command excellent salaries,
assuredly, but none of them would de-
nand any thing like the SIP, 600 which
Athens paid to Herodotus for reading
his history at the Panathenaic festival
Socrates, it is said. received almost
5000 for one grafton. and, probably,
even DR.. Depew could be engaged at a
figure more reasonable. We all remem-
Der that Virgil was rewarded most gen.
eronsly for his few lines on the young
narcellus, and Suetonius says that Asel-
Illus Sa binus received four hundred thou
sand sesterces-some SIT, 000-for dia-
1Ogue between mushroom, a cabbage,
thrush and an oyster. 1t cost the city
Of the Averni in Gaul round million
and half for statue of Mercury, and
this expenditure seems to have been
not especially exorbitant for the age. A
hundred other examples of ancient ex-
travagance might easily be found, but
all would point to the same general
truth, that our recklessness of expendi-
ture has not yet equaled the reckless
ness of the past. But we must remem-
Der that a national lapse into luxuri Gus
idleness is followed always by national
decay, and keep our eyes wide open to
the pleasant but dangerous tendency of
the present. Journal