But, on the other hand, perhaps his discovery of his insignificance does not discourage him, but only serves to rouse him to greater efforts. His close inspection of the palaces and performances of the fashionable and extravagant rich has fired his imagination and energy. In that case he does not marry. “I am too poor,” he says, as he looks at his paltry income of five thousand a year and thinks on the humble ménage it would maintain, and remembers that his poorest married acquaintances up in the Fifth avenue or Lake Drive district have fifteen thousand a year and cannot afford to entertain or to keep a carriage, and are always fretting about money. He considers what a “decent” hat or dress for a woman costs, and--well, his tailor’s bill was seven hundred dollars last year and he has almost no clothes. He remembers his bills for the few small and very modest dinners he gave--a week’s earnings gone in a few minutes and the dinner a poor affair beside the poorest he has had at the houses of his rich acquaintances. To console himself for his heroic sacrifice of sentiment to ambition, he takes a somewhat better apartment for his bachelor self in a more fashionable apartment house--his rent is twelve hundred a year. He works hard downtown; he continues to work hard uptown. He works as cleverly in the one quarter as in the other. He is always seen with rich people; he belongs to fashionable clubs; he dines in palaces; he goes for Saturday-to-Monday visits at great, extravagantly maintained country houses; he is seen in boxes at the opera, at the horse show; he expands his tastes and his expenditures with his rapidly expanding income. His “fixed charges” are now fifteen thousand a year--very moderate for a man of his associations.
In addition to these absolute necessities he spends about fifteen thousand more upon presents and entertaining. Half a dozen men living in the apartment house he lives in spend twice as much as he does and do not consider themselves, and are not considered, either extravagant or dissipated.
He is making a great deal of money, but he feels--and is--poor. However, he is sustained and soothed by the certainty of riches immediately ahead. He has been spending, but it has been in the nature of an investment--a most judicious investment from the standpoint of his purposes. And presently his cleverness and audacity and “large ideas” have their reward; and then he marries.
