Hopkinsville Kentuckian., 1890-10-07
ABOUT ExTRAlAGANCE.
In the Past Money Was Spent More Reck
lrssly Than Mt Present.

In the Past Money Was Spent More RecIs
irssly Than Mt Present.
Pcssimism continually charges q wo-
ful extravaganza upon our age. The
fathers, II says, were compelled tc
scrape and to save, mindful OF every
dollar, and content II only n meager
balance remained to their credit at the
end of the year. We are rapidly drifting
into enervating luxury, it atiirms, 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 a
release TO Il civilization eminently COM
Portable IL 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 better
social condition. We take a half-holiday
now and then TO study great pictures or
statues; We read moro than ever good
books and magazines, and we 1.-Two 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 extravagant than the people of cor
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 sum equal to
5000 for painting, and the artist re-
fused him, preferring to present the
picture to his country as gift. Julius
Cmsar bought of Timomachus, the Athe-
nian painter, two figures for eighty tai
ents, or 100000, and Apelles re-
ceived some $4,000 for portrait
of Alexander welding thunder
bolt Indeed, he himsef paid $751;
900 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- |
mand any thing like the Sia, 900 which |
Athens paid to Herodotus for reading |
his history at tho Panathenaic festival. |
Socrates, it is said. received almost |
$4,000 for ono grafton, and, probably, !
even Dr. Depew could be engaged at a
figure more reasonable. We all remem- |
Der that Virgil was rewarded most gen. /
erously for his few lines on the young |
Marcellus, and Suetonius says that Asel-
Illus Sabinus received four hundred thou
sand sestcrces-somo Si7,000-for dia-
logue between mushroom, n cabbage,
a thrush and an oyster. Itcost the city
of the Averni in Gaul round million
and half for a statue OF Mercury, and
this expenditure seems to have been
not especially exorbitant for the age. A
hundred other examples OF ancient ex-
might easily be found, but
all would point to the same general
truth, that our reclSlessness of expendi-
ture has not yet equaled the reckless
ness of thr past. But we must remem-
Der that u national lapse into luxurious |
idleness is followed always by national
decay, and keep our eyes wide open to .
the pleasant but dangerous tendency Of
the present-providencc Journal.