[Illustration: AN ENGLISH HOUSEMAID]
I do not know just what is to be inferred from a social fact or
statement like this, but I may say that the devotion to an ideal
of social position is far deeper with the English than with us.
Whether we spend more or not, I believe that the English live
much nearer their incomes than Americans do. I think that we save
more out of our earnings than they out of theirs, and that in
this we are more like the Continental peoples, the French or the
Italians. They spend vastly more on state than we do, because,
for one thing, they have more state to spend on. A man may
continue to make money in America, and not change his manner of
living till he chooses, and he may never change it. Such a thing
could not happen to an Englishwoman as happened to the elderly
American housewife who walked through the magnificent house which
her husband had bought to surprise her, and sighed out at last,
"Well, now I suppose I shall have to keep a girl!" The girl would
have been kept from the beginning of her husband's prosperity,
and multiplied, till the house was full of servants.
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