The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-07
GENTLE ART OF
 ENJOYING POVERTY How a Man Can be Happy on Ten Dollars Per
 Week. PLEASURES OF NEEDY Amusing Discussion in Eng fish Paper of Joys of
 Destitution.
PLEASURES OF NEEDY

ing on in the Westminster Gazette about Life on $4OO Per Annum." Can single woman, brought up in the cultivated class, live a civilized and happy life on less than ten dollars week? The actual question affects a small number of persons, but it sug- gests some larger issues. It is wretch ed to be really poor, if by poverty we mean want. But quite apart from all questions of hardship, of hunger. or cold, or constant fear of destitution, it is not pleasant to be much poorer than our neighbors. Yet there are those who support this comparative evil with positive grace, even though they have a family dependent upon them. They have acquired the art of being poor, and it is an requirement which presupposes many qualities and much study.
 Of course, there are a few people belonging to the cultivated classes who like being poor. Art has nothing to do with the matter. They are, so to speak, poor by nature. They would not stretch out their hands to get a fortune. They do not care for the good things which money brings, They l feel more free without them. They are bothered by possessions, fettered by luxury Conventional well-to-do existence seems to them as sort of 1 cage out of which one can only get through the mediation of dependents. They give orders with secret shame. The network of laws which support q graded society, and the outlines of which, blurred by English common sense, seldom obtrude themselves upon l the notice of the ordinary English man, dishgure for them the landscape 1 of life. They long to get out of sight 1 of them, and, in that moderate degree of poverty which imposes simplicity and precludes anxiety they are al ways most at their ease. Those, how ever, whom nature designed to be rich. lwhom fate placed among the well-to- do, and sheer necessity alone forces to study how best to be poor are not as these. They do not follow an inclina
 ton; they accomplish a task. Some power of self-suppression is necessary to them, and some power to suppress others is at least convenient.
 As we look around us among our ac- quaintance we shall all admit that we know good many people who have been very much embittered by compar- ative poverty while many others on the same income are very happy. It is impossible not sometimes to feel that the troubles of the first are, at least, in a measure of their own making. It lis not true that they made at the very outset an initial mistake. They decid- ed to look upon themselves as poor Irich-people instead of taking an en- tirely opposite point of view and con- Isidering themselves rich poor-people: They drew a false line between luxury and necessity and consequently they have no luxurles at all. They forget
 that the only really rich man is the
 man who has something to spare, and
 the only really poor man is the one who has nothing over. It is almost im- possible but that poor man who regulates his standard of life by that of his richer neighbors should feel
 some envy. It is very hard to see some one else doing so easily and so
 we'll that which we with so much
 struggle are doing so badly. Conse-
 quently one great source of pleasure is
 shut to these poor rich-people-i. e.,
 pleasure in other peoples pleasure.
 The light, delicious atmosphere of suc-
 cess which they might breathe among
 their friends Is tainted for them by
 jealousy, and the perpetual sense of
 an unfair handicap. The man, on the
 other hand, whom we may call the rich
 poor-man can stay with his most opu- lent friend and be perfectly happy. He lives at home as he lives abroad-af- ter different fashions-at his ease. Nc
 doubt it takes some courage to disre-
 gard the conventional ways of life and
 determine to be unlike ones neighbors
 It means the greatest of all the evld-
 ences of self-control, the power tc
 break with habit. It means the rarest
 of all social qualities, social independ-
 ence. It means, to be quite candid
 the power to exist, on other scores
 than money, that regard and polite lness which, cloak the fact as we will tmoney brings mechanically under oul
 present social system. Certain ad
 vantages of birth and upbringing art
 no doubt in these particulars substi
 tutes for money, and those who have them smile at the hesitation of less
 fortunate people who fear to give LII
 these intangible concomitants of {
 particular way of living We are al apt to smile at discomforts which car by no possibility be ours, and to set
 them, especially when they are con
 nected with grade or caste, through {
 satire medium," whereby sympathy !, is cffectually sterilized.
 But though men and women wht , find themselves suddenly poor, or wht lwake in middle life to the fact tha
 an income which used to increase yea by year has reached it's highest poin
 and is beginning to go down, hav many hard lessons to learn, they try Il IL lLSy ulS uSotllASN bO bSSpiiiO Ploii cient, not to take the situation too SC 7 riously. It is not by determined re E Inunciation, but by determined enjoy ment, that the art of being poor brought to perfection. They consld ] CT how best to dispose their energ for enjoyment so as to bring an outle < for it within their means. They sec diligently for the kernel of happiness within the husk of pleasure, and, a a rule, they find the kernel is tn s cheaper part. After all, how many o ! ll..n